Sometimes They Call Me Super

by KorenCZ11

Harmony Stories VI: Of Rainbows and Ravens (part 2)

When I fell, my body wasn’t damaged much by the impact, but my brain was. Knocked my screws loose and I gained temporary retrograde amnesia. I couldn’t remember last week, I couldn’t remember last year, I couldn’t remember the last decade of my life. I even forgot my own name, hence Rainbow Dash. I’d gained my cutiemark in that fall, and with my appearance the way it was, that’s what my partner started calling me when I told her I couldn’t remember anything. It would stay like this for years until I could fly again and I learned what happened before the day I fell.

Exactly one year after I became Rainbow Dash, we went on a trip that would change me forever. There’s nothing in my life I really regret doing, but there are times I wish this one part didn’t happen. I did what I had to, but this put me in a bad place, and only further down did the rabbit hole go. Like every outing at this point, I essentially wore what amounted to a leash and a collar, and dragged my partner around while she told me what to buy. She’d always had this impressive read on my subtle movements, almost like she could read my mind, and because of that she never managed to hurt herself on something she couldn’t see, I figured this was the case. That was… until that day. I’d gotten really good at detecting and feeling the presences of others, and usually, nopony could walk into a room without me knowing about it. A mare, covered in blue-black feathers from head to hooves, no wings to be found and a horn on her head, had managed to avoid my detection and walked straight into my partner.

I was shocked and almost turned my blood on the mare, but my partner was quick to apologize. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there,’ she said. ‘Clearly, you common filth,’ was returned to us. I was a little angry and told her to fuck right off shortly before explaining that she couldn’t see if she tried. The raven mare rose to full height, and as I was thirteen and just barely shorter than I am now, so she towered over me. ‘Little filth should know her place, lest there be consequences...’ she threatened before walking away.

She had this weird darkness to her, and not in the ‘Oh, yeah, that’s evil’ kinda way, but like there was just less light around her as she walked. When she knocked my partner over, I notice that her feathers were really shiny and pretty, but as she walked away, everything about her body was like it was covered in shadow.

I ignored her after she left, and we went on with our lives like nothing ever happened. It started to get late, and I told my partner the time and suddenly, she gasped. She said, ‘Don’t make any sudden movements. We’re being followed. Keep walking, but don’t head home. Stay by the light.’ A chill ran up my spine, and as we moved, I noticed it too. There were eyes on us, and several pairs at that.

Nearly an hour passed while we wandered around Manehattan, and the number of eyes only increased as we drifted from place to place. We never stopped, and we were getting tired. That’s when the first one showed up at the other end of the road. I couldn’t tell anything about this pony, other than that they were wearing a hood and smiling. Its teeth were sharp, and it just started toward us, slowly. Taking casual steps in the dark away from the street lights with that crazy wide smile never leaving it’s face. I tried to turn the other direction, only to end up facing another pursuer carrying a knife and smiling just as wildly as the other one.

My options were to either try and cross the street, where they could both start running, or walk down the dark alleyway beside me and escape. In the end, I probably should’ve tried to run, but I went into the darkness in the hopes I would find a light at the end. Spoiler alert: I didn’t. I kept going with my partner in toe like a dog on a leash, only to find that the two buildings were conjoined to each other by a corridor in this alley, and all the doors around were locked. I hadn’t relearned how to fly yet, and my partner hadn’t flown in years since a close call back when her vision started to deteriorate. The only way out… was through the group that had gathered at the exit.

Group, meaning more than two. There were five of them in total, and all ten eyes were accounted for and present. Teeth one, teeth two, a samurai, a meathead, and a raven. Just from the way they walked, I could tell that the first two were grunts, but the three in the back were the real deal. They just radiated ‘dangerous’ from their being as they moved. My heart was beating like crazy and was just about sitting in my throat at this point, but my partner couldn’t defend herself, so it was up to me to get us out of this.

‘My, my, my, now what do we have here? A pair of lost little fillies, all on their lonesome,’ the raven mare said. I could swear I just about growled at them and yelled back,

‘yeah, what about it?’ The group got closer until I felt the need to back up. All the while, the raven mare just smiled, her teeth perfect, but made me more afraid than either of the two crazies in front of her. When my partner stopped at the wall, I realized we were cornered.

‘Oh no, nowhere left to run? A gimp and a blind mare, a pair of flightless birds. Our clients love pegasus, but they have a habit of… falling. A pair of flightless pegasus though? That would sell for a high price…’ the raven echoed, her voice almost like it was booming, but she was no louder than a whisper. ‘Restrain them. Damage the goods again, and it’ll be the last time you use your filthy member,’ she said to the grunts.

So, at this point, you can only imagine what’s going on through thirteen year old me’s head. I’m about to get kidnapped. I’m about to get raped. I’m gonna be sold off to some other rapist. My care taker is going to experience the same thing. We’re going to get separated and tortured. I’ll never figure out who I am. I’d finally made it to a point where my condition was stable enough to experience a bit of normalcy in my weird life, and you know what? I wasn’t ready to give that up.” I turned my stump toward the group and used my blood to from a small tentacle.

“Back then, I wasn’t able to do much more than make a limb out of it like this, but I knew how to use my blood to a small extent. I’d gotten to the point where I could pick things up with it, though not to the degree that I can now, and with that knowledge in mind, I tried to form it into a blade. You see, while outside of my body, my blood can act like regular blood and coagulate, but I can manipulate that to have it coagulate as I want it to, and even revert it back to liquid. I can take this a step further and form very sharp, very thin surfaces out of it that become a kind of pink-red crystalline structure, or like my sword when it’s at its strongest. These crystals on their own can cut steel, but just like real crystals, if you hit ‘em in the right spot, they’ll fracture and break easily.” I followed my words with the actions of making and breaking my own crystals.

“However, if a crystal breaks, and I’m still conscious, it’ll turn itself into mist and flow right back into my stump,” I said as I had my blood follow suit. “The less concentrated I am on my blood, the closer to gas it becomes and vice-versa. If any of you remember the fight Applejack and I had at the harbor,” I then turned and stared Applejack down. “Every time she jabbed at my wound, my blood fell apart and turned to mist,” I shot, taking my eyes off her and putting them back on the group.

“Look, Ah said Ah was sorry,” Applejack said. I rolled my eyes.

“You said you were sorry because you shot me in the leg. I never got an apology for you abusing my tender flesh.” Applejack rolled her eyes and Goose leaned in to the table with a creepy smile on his face.

“I’m sorry, what was that? I’d love to hear more about you, Applejack, and tender flesh,” he said with a laugh. Applejack gave him a look that I’d be afraid of, and Scootaloo nodded.

“Yeah, we always speculated that one of them might be gay. Maybe that majestic bridal style catch on Caballo day really was the spark of true love♥” she cooed. I smacked her across the back of the head.

“We’ve talked about this before. Just because my mane is rainbow colored does not mean I swing toward home base. I had an edgy phase when I was fourteen and tried to dye it red. As it turns out, my mane doesn’t like dye either.” I stated, remembering the horror I felt when all that color just slid off my head after I’d paid good money for it. Damn it, it was such a waste! I could’ve bought food with those three silver bits!

“Pardon moi, you mean you and our sisters? About each other? Whatever would give you that idea?” Rarity asked.

“Easy. You all come home late or in the morning some days, I know you two had this weird tension every time you met, you and Applejack suspiciously spent a lot of time together on Sweetie’s birthday and several times after, and as soon as Rainbow and Applejack met, she started-” Oh no. I covered her mouth and flicked her head.

“Keep that to yourself, you brat!” Goose formed a smirk and leaned back in his chair.

“Oh, no, by all means, please share with the class. We’re a family here, we don’t have many secrets.” I stared him down.

“No secrets huh? You touch your dick since you’ve been here?” He opened his mouth, closed it, then looked away. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Scoot tapped my hoof real hard, and I realized I’d been suffocating her. “Oh, sorry.” She took a gaping breath and relaxed almost to the point of falling over in her folding chair.

“Note to self: don’t talk about Rainbow’s ‘habits’ in mixed company. She might just smother me for it.” I rolled my eyes.

“Hey, uh, this whole bonding thing is fun and all, but I would really like to know how you and your friend got out of that alley.” Pinkie said. Oh, right. I was telling a story. My story.

“Right! That. Well, so much for the tension I was trying to build. The two grunts weren’t very big, fast, or strong, and with my blood shaped to a point like prehensile spear, I killed them both.” Scootaloo turned her head and just about dropped her jaw and the rest of the room went dead silent.

“You… you did what?” she asked, her attitude changed from that cocky little brat she was a moment ago to the filly I knew. I felt my tone shift as I remembered my first set of kills.

“Once they were dealt with, the raven mare sent her other guys. The big one was huge, but slow. I took what I’d learned from killing the first two and applied that to him. I jumped off the alley wall and gouged out his eye, then pushed my blood spear through the socket till he fell over. The samurai was far faster than him, and he cut me in the chest.” I pulled some of my coat back to reveal a scar similar to the one over my eye to the group.

“The cut was deep, and I started to bleed really bad. But with the rage, fear, and the primal instinct to kill I’d built up so far, I’d gained an elevated understanding of my blood, and took full advantage of the new source of weapon I had access to. I halted the blood from exiting my wound once I had enough, and formed a blade similar to his. I blocked his next three attacks, and took a chance with his fourth. He managed to cut my eye. I managed to cut his heart out.

I ripped the organ from his chest and held it out for him to see it stop beating as he died. I pulled the sword off my face with my wing and then tossed the heart aside. A blade of blood on my left and a blade of steel on my right, I went after the raven mare next. Since she was the boss, she was well more experienced in combat and far more powerful than the other four. Underneath her feathers at what I’d thought were hooves were actually talons. She’d come at me, disappear and then slash me from behind. She did this four times before I figured out she was teleporting somehow. I stopped moving and trying to chase her. Instead, I used my new understanding of my blood to feel for her. The moment it moved, I’d know where she was coming from. She reappeared out of the shadows, and just like that, I swung a blade of my blood right where I expected her neck to be.

When all was said and done, I felt very cold, and very alive. I couldn’t see anything out of my left eye but red, and all in front of me were dead bodies. Tears started to well up in my eyes, and I cried and laughed maniacally. ‘This was your own fault! You attacked us, and now you’re dead!’ I remember shouting. I started ripping the feathers off of the raven mare’s coat, until I’d taken them all, leaving her as a bloody bare-skinned chicken. I stole the coats of the two thugs and the meat head, I took the armor, the sword and the sheath off the samurai, and I loaded it all up so I could carry it. I told my partner that they were dead in the event she didn’t hear me just about scream it earlier after I was done… collecting, and she didn’t say a word. She just… hugged me. I can still remember every word she said that night.

‘It’s okay now. You’re safe. You don’t have to hurt anymore.’ I started crying again, but this time, the weight of everything that just happened finally hit me. I didn’t just defend myself, I brutally murdered three ponies and I laughed the whole time. I was smiling while their blood was flying in my face from the wounds I inflicted. Killing them… felt good. At the time, I thought that something inside me had died, and it wasn’t for another two years that I would figure out that it was my innocence. The adrenaline of fighting for your life, the rush of pleasure from spilling blood, the sheer delight that I got from seeking a situation like that. I had to feel it all again.

I tried to justify it to protect my fragile ego. It was their fault. They were trying to sell us into slavery, I only did what I had to do. I was the hero. I cleaned the streets of five ponies who didn’t deserve to live. And I could do it again. I could be just like them! The heroes that say they protect the streets, except I would be better! I’ll save everyone and kill all the bad ponies first, so that nopony ends up like we did! Or so I would say. I used those coats, armor, and feathers I stole to make the first version of my costume, and from there, ponies started calling me the Bloody Crow. I killed for fun for a while, just to keep getting that rush, to feed my addiction to blood. Any unsuspecting creature on the street who looked like no good, I went after and ripped to pieces. This was uh… during puberty and all, so I uh… I got off on it, I’m ashamed to admit. The frail lie I called ‘justice’ was no more than a way to act out on my desires.

Soon, ponies with real skill would start approaching me with ‘offers’ to earn money while doing what I loved. I accepted, as long as the sender could survive long enough to get me to calm down. What better way to keep going than earning the money we need to live, and keep acting out on my impulses? Job after job, I killed, and I killed, and I killed, all in the name of my justice, for anypony who would pay me to do it. For a whole half year since that day, I began the name of the Bloody Crow. I was small time, but I had a few regulars who would come and offer me jobs. It was around then that my partner had started to figure out how to use her powers to restore her sight. She saw… what a monster I’d become.

The Beast was the monster in my childhood that kept me from even considering something like the evil I would commit on a daily basis, but with that memory long gone from my head, the parents who raised me with all the love and care in the world forgotten, the teachers and coaches that had encouraged me to be a hero lost, and the idol I looked up to missing without a trace, all that was left was instinct and killing.

My partner’s powers can alter memories, and even take them away from ponies, but she never could figure out how to restore them. She tried and tried to fix me, to turn me away from this horrible road I’d gleefully thrown myself down, but all to no avail. We fought over it, but something inside me kept me from ever turning my blade or my powers on her. No matter how angry I got, no matter how much I thought I hated her, she meant a lot to me, and I could never betray her. Another half year passed, and she figured that she could only manage her powers to give her half the sight she used to have, making her heavily farsighted at best. She started working for Argent at the age of twenty one, and within a year, she worked her way through the ranks until she earned a… um, really good promotion.

Now that she could sustain herself, and function on her own again, my bloody money was no longer of any value to her. No matter how far off the deep end I’d gone, my only clear goal outside of satisfying myself was to try and pay my partner back. I wanted to try and provide for her, I wanted to try and help her when she needed it, but she would refuse me at every turn. One day, after a whole year of me doing what I could and her refusing me at every turn, just a little before she got her promotion, I asked why she never let me help her do anything, and finally, she gave me an answer.

‘Because, Rainbow… no, your name is the Bloody Crow now, isn’t it? It’s because you’ve become… a monster. The Rainbow I rescued would never do something so horrible to another pony. The Rainbow I nursed back to health wouldn’t slaughter the rivals of some evil group just to kill for the fun of it! I’ve been watching you for some time now, I can see what you see, feel what you feel. You enjoy it. You get the most pleasure out of a kill when they fight back and you crush them, just after it looks like they have a chance. You love it when get to feel their blood on your skin, and there’s nothing you hate more than running out of ponies to execute. You’re no better than the raven mare we met a two years ago.’

I’m fifteen by this point, even though I’m completely oblivious to that fact, and her words devastated me. Wasn’t it justice that these ponies died? No, you’re just a monster. Wasn’t killing them before they had the chance to hurt somepony else the right thing to do? No, you kill for fun. Aren’t they the bad guys? No. You are the bad guy. While even to this day, it doesn’t take her more than a few words to get into my head and make me feel bad, her words hit me so hard then that I retired my cape and didn't leave the house for three days straight. My partner finally broke into my room and tried to feed me, but I wouldn’t take it. I had lost all the confidence I’d built up in a single sentence, and spent all the time remembering back on all the ponies I killed. Half of them didn’t deserve it. Some were just petty thieves and I executed them on the spot because I could. I was a monster.

On the third day, I just about passed out because my anemia had been acting up, and I finally gave in and had a meal with my partner. I didn’t want to eat it because I didn’t think I deserved it, but none the less, I ate. I had to keep living. The one thing that was beat into my head over the first year since I’d fallen from Cloudsdale was ‘survive, above all else.’ She would say it over and over again until I stabilized in the first three months, and things finally became… normal.

I wouldn’t get over it for a long time, and even now I’m still ashamed of myself when I go too far and end up killing when I don’t mean to just for that feeling. However, I finally felt good enough to leave the house after a week, and I decided that I would find out where I came from. The question of ‘who am I?’ had been on my mind more often than not in those days, and I’d regained my ability to fly, even if I couldn’t do it on my own wing.

I set out for the city in the sky after my partner had told me that it was above that area on the year I fell. Luckily for me, it was about in the same spot since it passes above there every year, and I had just enough stamina to make it. But just barely. I managed to get to the edge of the city before I passed out. I woke up a few hours later, and since I’d set out at noon, it was about five, and the city was bathed in orange yellow hues.

It’s a bit strange if you’ve never seen it before, and since I’d basically never been at this point, it was a little like waking up in wonderland. The roads were golden with bright white glowing outlines, the buildings and stores were various shades of yellow, orange, and red, and it was all just captivating. It would look kind of weird if a random gimped pegasus nopony had ever seen was walking around, so I brought a cloak with me and started wandering the streets.

My body took itself around places I used to know, like the school I once went to, that park I beat Fluttershy over the head at, her house, which was empty by this point, and then finally, mine. When I got there, I felt a sense of nostalgia that hit me really hard. I knew this place, and it made me happy to see it. The lights inside were on, and it looked lived in. I didn’t know why I felt like this of course, but I had to investigate further. Without so much as a thought, I knocked on the door.

An older Stallion answered, and I just about lost every thought about what I was going to do next when I finally met somepony. I mean, for all I know, this guy could be my dad and just flip out on me. I just stared at him for a while until finally, he broke the silence. ‘Um, can I help you?’ he asked. Not my dad, I figured then and there. Finally, I realized that I’d just been staring at this random 50 somethings old pegasus for the past two minutes. So, I just kind of told him the truth and spilled everything in a heaping pile of ‘I haven’t interacted with normal ponies in years.’ The guy resonated with my plight and he welcomed me inside. I met his wife and they invited me to have dinner with them.

It was a weird feeling. All too familiar, to have dinner with two older ponies at a table in this particular room. The way the light shined in through the windows, the fresh cooked meal on the table. The smell of home. I started getting these flashes of old memories. Two ponies I presumed were my parents making me dinner at an early age, at the very least ten years ago. It just felt so nostalgic, I think I started crying without realizing it.

They asked me what was wrong, and I just felt compelled to tell the truth again. I hadn’t been in a situation like that one in years, and only then did I remember that. My scattered past was starting to come back in little pieces just by having a meal here. If I could learn what happened, or maybe see some faces, I might just fix me. Eventually, it would.

I asked about the previous owners of this house and any major incidents in the last couple years. He went on to tell me that he didn’t know the couple that lived here before, but he did have the name of the agency that sold the house and could direct me there. As for incidents, he mentioned that there was a tragic shooting near by a year prior, and a few years before that, there was a race that took a young filly’s life. A shooting wouldn’t have made sense considering my wound, but a tragic race? Now that sounded like a lead.

I asked about it, but the couple said they only knew that it happened. Cloudsdale is huge, and getting a house there isn’t cheap. It’s not Manehattan, but within the floating city are three separate public school districts, and a private and a public University. The population is almost strictly pegasai, but even then, it’s still huge. These ponies weren’t even near by where the accident took place, but it because it was such a major event, the entire city knew about it. The story goes just about the same way I told it to you, but without names to protect Kilogram’s dad from the bad press. Five underage ponies sunck into and attempted to complete the track at competitive times, and in the process, one filly broke the sound barrier and crashed straight into the ground below. To this day, nopony knows how she did it, and a body was never found, but her blood stained the sky and a very specific area where it’s believed she landed. With so much blood lost, there was very little chance she survived, even if she didn’t just splatter on the ground.

The wheels started turning, and more memories of that day started to come back. I started to remember faces and events, but words and names still wouldn’t return. I needed more information, so I thanked the couple and asked if there was a public library that was open all night anywhere. There isn’t one that’s open for that long in Cloudsdale, but the public university typically has students that camp out inside to cram for morning tests, so it’s not too uncommon to find ponies inside while the building is technically ‘closed.’

That couple was really nice, and they even offered to let me have their spare room until the morning, but I needed to figure out who I was. I had all the pieces now, I just needed something to string them together. Blood in the sky, breaking the sound barrier, my lightning bolt cutiemark, it all lined up so perfectly that I was the only pony capable of causing it. I managed to get into the library before it closed and from there till the next morning, I would follow links about the incident until finally, I came upon my own name.

Once that happened, it all came back to me. I remembered everything. The weight of all the things I’d done since I forgot, and all the things that I wanted to be before then came crashing down like I was slammed by something twice my size. I figured out that my parents had sold the house and moved away, but to where I don’t know, and I never could work up the courage to find out. It might’ve just been the Beast goading me, or it was really Fluttershy being uninhibited as to what she said, but she was right earlier. I’ve always been afraid of what they would think if they saw me now.

My dad was a veteran, he knows what a pony who’s killed looks like, he is one. If he looked at me today… I doubt he would ever be able to see me as his daughter again…” I noticed several ponies in the room move to say something, but I held out a hoof. “Before any of you say something about it, I do plan to go look for them one day. But… I’m not ready for that. When I see them, I want to be able to say that I lived my dream and became a hero like I always wanted to. Once this is all over, and we make it through this, I will make a promise to all of you here that I will go see my parents. If I have an accomplishment, like saying that I helped save a city and fought for my country while risking my life for the greater good, then maybe it can balance out some of the shitty things I did before then. I won’t be the same pony I was back then, and I’ll finally be somepony that the me of twelve years ago would look up to… just like him…” I shook the thought out of my head and then decided to continue on.

“So, I remembered who I am after three years of not knowing and losing myself in the process. What do I do now that I’ve regained my morals and ideals? I had no clue. My partner didn’t need me anymore, and I didn’t want to become dependent again, so… what could I do? Eventually I sulked my way back home after a few days spent crying in the Cloudsdale University library trying to figure out what happened to the ponies in my past, namely Fluttershy, only to be met with more disappointment. I mean, I found out that she was attending that high school that got shot up, I thought she was dead, and that would explain why her family wasn’t here anymore.

Everypony had moved away, and anypony who did know me from back then was either long gone, or not somepony I wanted to see. In my short lived wisdom, I asked my partner what she thought I should do after telling her everything I learned about myself, and once again, she graced me with a painful answer.

‘What should you do huh? I’m honestly shocked that you don’t already know the answer to that. What did you want to do before all this started? There’s a single common theme in everything you told me, and you know what that is? You’ve said over and over again that most of your motivations after meeting this other filly were to become a hero. So what are you doing now? Sobbing over a lost past and hoping that somepony else can drag you out of your own misery? Foolish. You are the only one who can fix your problems. What better way to redeem yourself for your past actions over the last two years then trying to save others the right way? Though misguided, even while lost, you still came up with your horrid idea in the name of justice. If somepony who fell as far as you did can still keep justice in her mind covered in blood, then how good of a hero could you become if you used that sword to defend instead of harm?’

I swear, she can pinpoint and exploit insecurities in an instant, but none the less, she had me pegged. I didn’t really know what to do to start, so I just tried to plan how I would act when I finally did get out there and try to be a hero. I already had a reputation, at least in the underworld, as a pretty brutal mercenary. Trying to turn that around was gonna be hard. A couple days passed, and suddenly, my partner’s health took a turn for the worse. She got sick, and then sicker, and after a week, she was bed ridden.

I took her to the hospital finally, and she had some crazy infection in her hoof. The damage wasn’t permanent, and the treatment was possible to return her back to normal, but the cost… was well more than what either of us had saved up. I was desperate, and I would’ve done anything to save her… so I did. I went back to being the Bloody Crow just as soon as I’d quit, and started earning just to help my partner get well. She got out of the hospital after a while, but I never stopped working for the mafia. The money was great. Any time I did something right, my pockets were loaded with enough cash to pay for supplies for months in advance. I didn’t get lost and forget my convictions this time, but I still killed on almost a weekly basis because I wanted to.

It was an uphill battle against a strong impulse that I loved to feel versus my own ideals that had only recently resurfaced in my life. However, this fight wouldn’t last as long as it probably could have. I suppose you could say that it never really ended, because on occasion, it still happens, even if accidentally. But this turning point in my life, really forced down my desire to be a hero for somepony. The thing that caused me to change… was you kid.” I pulled Scootaloo close and she gave me an uncertain look like I expected she would after all that.

“I’m the reason you… I guess, stopped killing ponies for fun?” I shrugged and nodded.

“Kinda. I wanted to be better than I was and break the habit anyway, but you? You’re the reason I managed to do it.” She looked down, and then back up at me, the uncertainty replaced with genuine interest.

“How?” I smiled.

“I’m glad you asked. To explain that, we have to go back to four years ago. This was two months after my partner recovered, and I’d been working for the mafia again for five. A certain job came up, and when I started it, I thought it was just a simple request…”