Vampires About Ponyville

by kazamacat

Chapter 03 - Warnings

Rainbow Dash silently flew under the cloak of night, carrying Apple Bloom with her before finding a suitable alley and dumpster. She set the young vampire inside.

"You killed Apple Bloom?" a voice she knew asked.

The sky blue pegasus turned around to meet the sight of a very disapproving Twilight Sparkle. "Sparky!" she greeted with joy. "To what do I owe the pleasure of you literally waiting for me to bring a dead body to a dumpster. What? You obsessed with me or something?" She playfully winked.

Twilight Sparkle narrowed her eyes. "You know I need to stop you."

Rainbow Dash's eyes twinkled in contrast. "I know you wish you could after you realized what you started with me."

Twilight tried to tackle her but instead crashed into a solid brick wall, so quick was her target. The purple unicorn winced in pain.

"Tsk tsk tsk," Rainbow said. "You gave up pony blood, remember? Suddenly had a moral calling...wishing to be some kind of angel. And I...took it up in your place." She blew through her nostrils and flashed her red vampire eyes. "Your demon. 'Demon Dash', right?" Rainbow inquired, followed with a wicked chuckle.

Twilight found herself struggling to stand upright.

"That's what you call me. Crimson turned us both, but I wasn't quite the right kind of vampire for the two of you...I was too soft. Too weak. Too…" Rainbow Dash tilted her head, pausing to recall the word. "...equine?"

Two purple eyes frightfully dared to look up and met two radiant magenta ones.

The thoughtful expression on Rainbow's face morphed into a cocky smirk. "Am I not what you wanted?" Rainbow taunted her. "A vampire who has fully embraced her nature, who can kill without qualms…"

She paused again, letting the moment linger to add some drama before lifting her muzzle closer to Twilight's ear.

"...and who will never, ever leave you," Rainbow whispered seductively.

Twilight winced again at that, her own ears flattening back, striking to the heart of so much.

Cackling, Rainbow Dash punched the brick wall just to the side of Twilight's face, making the other vampire flinch. Rainbow drew even closer and sniffed at Twilight's mane, then inhaled. "Your fear tastes good tonight," she remarked, as if she were paying the unicorn a compliment with such words. "I know you weren't counting on my vengeance Sparky, but that is how you'll pay for what you did. And you will pay. Forever and ever. Eternity was your gift to me after all."

Twilight's eyes darted down shamefully, and she swallowed, saying nothing, a small tear forming in her eyes. "Rainbow, I…"

"Save it," Rainbow cut her off with sudden bitterness. "I got somewhere to be. The game's had enough intermission, thanks. Catch you later, Angel." She stepped back before whacking Twilight upside the head with a hoof, causing Twilight to be too dazed to do anything as Rainbow left the alley, forgetting about the body that brought them to cross paths in the first place.

Twilight Sparkle stumbled for a moment before gathering her strength and making her way over to Apple Bloom. She listened for a heartbeat and felt for a pulse before rolling her eyes at herself. Rainbow Dash really could mess her up. She couldn't think straight thanks to that mare. Vampires could only mimic those feelings from within, not detectable to other living creatures. Lucky for her, unicorn vampires could use magic to give them a proper insight nonetheless. Her horn lit for a moment as she scanned for signs of "life" in Apple Bloom. Rainbow had drained the earth pony to the point of lost consciousness, but there was still enough blood left that with a lot of care, yes, Twilight could nurse her back to health.

Twilight picked Apple Bloom up and put the unconscious form over her backside to carry her. "Five hundred years, and I still haven't been able to do anything about this monster I created," she muttered to herself, followed by a guilty sigh.

Maybe she could if she drank pony blood, but that was how she ended up in this mess to begin with. She was quite the bloodthirsty vampire herself once...

---

Nine-hundred years ago…

Rainbow Dash walked into a room and lit a candle.

"Surprise!" multiple ponies said with a cheery greeting.

The sky blue pegasus feigned a smile. "Oh, you shouldn't have," she told the room, eyes searching and finding her lifelong companion.

Twilight Sparkle trotted up to her. "But we wanted to!" the purple unicorn said with a much more sincere smile of her own.

They hugged each other since everyone with them assumed them to be partners. While this was true, the nature of their partnership, even then, was a complicated one. Twilight relished deviously in drinking pony blood, vampire or mortal, and Rainbow Dash...resisted following that path...back then….

"Who's hungry?" Twilight said, suddenly turning to the rest of the room.

Numerous ponies happily raised their hooves.

Rainbow Dash laughed nervously at the sight. "Uh...how about we eat outside?" she suggested, figuring it would be easier to fly in and save who she could.

"But I already have everything ready here," Twilight whined.

"It's okay," a voice from the group said.

"We don't mind. We'll help set everything up," another voice offered.

Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash met eyes intensely for a moment before Twilight broke into a smile at everyone. "Alright, then. Let's do that…"

Rainbow Dash carefully eyed all the other ponies and Twilight especially.

The group nonetheless made their way outside to see gray clouds in an early night sky.

Twilight magically raised a triangle and dinged it.

Numerous red flashes lit up, sharp teeth took shape, and vampires attacked mortals. Screams filled the air.

Rainbow Dash seethed but started to fly in before finding Twilight standing in front of her with a smirk, magically lifting a small orange-coated pegasus filly in front of Rainbow. The filly had small wings, short violet hair, and tearful purple eyes. Rainbow's magenta eyes widened at the sight. "What do you think you're doing?" she hissed at Twilight.

"You're too soft," Twilight told her harshly. "You know exactly what I'm doing." With that, her magic lifted the filly much higher in the air with the unspoken threat of dropping her to her doom, all as a bloody carnage played out in the background.

Rainbow Dash fumed, swooping in to tear the filly from Twilight's magical grip. "Stop it, Twilight. When is enough enough for you, huh? Attacking kids now? Where does it end with this? You're...too far…" Rainbow closed her eyes and sighed, tears forming.

"Too far gone," Twilight finished for her with an annoyed scoff.

"You've crossed a line today, Sparky," Rainbow said with a warning Twilight only later would realize to be a foreshadowing of her partner's future malice. "Even without pony blood, I can protect her, at least, from you."

Rainbow held the filly closer and tighter but gently enough to tell the younger pony that she was under protection now.

Twilight blinked and took a step back with a brief, ever so brief, glimpse into past equinity...into a fleeting sense of remorse she would not truly have back until she later pushed Rainbow herself too far...

---

The memory complete, Twilight Sparkle sighed yet again to herself as she arrived at the pair's house with Apple Bloom on her back. "I don't know how to get her back, even after all these years, but I swear...I'll find a way. I need her back. I need my Rainbow Dash back. Not to mention the rest of you would better off without such a powerful, sadistic killer running rampant. She really is everything Crimson and I dreamed of until I realized what I'd done."

---

Sweetie Belle ran and ran and ran, a mix of worry and horror at finding out that now two of her friends were vampires. Who next? Who else? Twilight Sparkle? She cringed at that. Twilight probably was one too since she and Rainbow lived together for as long as Sweetie Belle had known them both.

She frantically pushed at a door that wouldn't budge.

"No one's allowed in there tonight," an unfamiliar voice said.

Sweetie Belle hesitantly turned to see a stallion she did not know.

"I uh…" she stuttered. "I...need to uh…"

He cocked his head for a moment in curiosity. "Is something wrong, dear?"

"Don't call me that," Sweetie Belle muttered.

"Oh, my apologies," the polite stallion said. "It's just that you seem rather tense, and I was a little concerned. Really...Miss? Is it okay if I call you 'Miss'?"

Sweetie Belle quietly nodded, not wanting to go fully into exchanging names with this stranger. After four vampires in a single night, and bearing witness to one of them outright killing a mortal like her, she wasn't in a trusting mood.

"Really, Miss...is something wrong?" the stallion asked.

Something in his eyes. She narrowed her eyes, scanning them intently.

This made the stallion himself nervous, and his eyes flashed green.

Sweetie Belle was far too worked up to figure out red from green though. She mainly saw that eyes flashed a color, and she knew that as a warning, so she went back to frantically pushing at the useless door.

The stallion grabbed her tightly, aiming for restraint without hurting her.

"Let me go," Sweetie Belle begged in a whisper between streaming tears.

"Miss, you must calm down. Now, I don't know what's wrong, but you cannot go through there. Let me help you," he advised.

"Your eyes. Your eyes," she moaned frantically, shaking her head in fear.

"Yes, my eyes flash green sometimes. I'm a changeling," he informed her. "But it's alright. I'm not here to hurt you or feed on you. It's okay."

Sweetie Belle paused and looked up at him. "So, you're not with Rainbow Dash…?"

The changeling himself pulled back in surprise though he still held her tight enough she couldn't run yet. "Rainbow Dash? No, I'm not with her tonight, though we are on friendly terms from when I last saw her."

"How long ago was that?" Sweetie Belle asked.

"Oh, fifty years I'd wager," the changeling answered with sincere honesty.

A whir of the wind whisked through them both, as a flying pony approached. "And here I am, in the flesh," Rainbow Dash told them with a playful and proud air as she landed.

The changeling loosened his grip but only looked at Rainbow Dash in quiet surprise while Sweetie Belle herself made no move to run just yet, looking up at him, looking at her hunter.

"So you are," the changeling said with an easygoing smile. "How have you been?"

"Vengeful," Rainbow admitted with a casual shrug.

Sweetie Belle sensed the changeling himself tense at that word.

"Danger mode?" he asked as if that phrase had some special meaning to the pegasus. "'Demon Dash'?"

Rainbow Dash smirked. "I take it you got that from Twilight."

He silently nodded.

"'Demon Dash'?" Sweetie Belle asked, calling their attention to her. "Rainbow, what's he talking about?"

Rainbow Dash looked at the white unicorn, and for a fleeting second, she seriously considered the question.

"Rainbow has a bit of a dark side, I've heard," the changeling answered for the vampire. "But it comes and goes. I myself have never seen it, only heard from Twilight Sparkle it exists. She warned me about it."

Sweetie Belle looked from him to Rainbow, a sudden rush of hope mixed with still existing horror in her eyes. "Is that true?"

Rainbow Dash's eyes scanned them both for a thoughtful moment. "Yeah, I'm in the mood to kill if you must know." Her eyes flashed in a threatening red, and she addressed her changeling friend. "You have my prey. So, if you'll just give her to me...You can even let her go, so I can chase her a little more."

The changeling hesitated as Sweetie Belle squirmed a little in his grip. "I'm not...one to...let such things happen...."

At last, he had pushed the wrong button, struck the wrong nerve, and Rainbow Dash crouched low, pouncing on him in an instant. He had just enough time to process that look and that stance to let the unicorn go. Sweetie Belle fled, not looking back.

The changeling shape-shifted into a bear and growled, fighting the rainbow-maned pegasus to no avail. Struggling and realizing he stood no chance, he transformed into a stallion she knew and hated. Thanks to Twilight, he knew the form. This shape was his last jab, last reach to get to her. And he did get to her.

Rainbow Dash seethed at the sight of a white unicorn stallion with crimson red hair. Tears streamed down her face, and she sobbed until she thought of something that put her in a fit of diabolical laughter. Twilight would be terribly distraught to see the dead form of Crimson. Oh, that would be just awful. Sweetie Belle could wait, Rainbow Dash decided. After all, she had time on her side. "Forever and ever, Sparky," she muttered bitterly as she picked up the body.

She flew home and found a part of the house where she was sure Twilight would see the mangled body. Grabbing some stakes and nails, she set to work in a proper set up that would make him look killed in a way, familiar to them both, as part of her vengeance. As she finished driving a stake through his dead heart, she heard, "Rainbow?" in a familiar voice but not Twilight's.

Rainbow Dash turned around because the source of the voice was quite a shock. The orange-coated filly had not aged a day, which was impressive because they hadn't seen each other in nearly nine hundred years. "Scootaloo? What are you doing here, squirt?"

Scootaloo only timidly backed away, saying nothing. This was not the image she knew of her sister figure from all that time ago. She looked up with tears welling in her eyes. She kept opening her mouth to say something before finally simply fleeing the house.

Rainbow Dash stared after her, then at the fake Crimson, and then after Scootaloo again. She stood stock still before slapping herself and flying after the scent.

Scootaloo found an empty alley and panted. "Was that really her?" she asked herself. "How...how...how…" she muttered frantically, pacing back and forth.

She perked up in a small panic as she heard the familiar swoosh approach. She turned around. There Rainbow Dash stood, her gaze serious and piercing. She looked cross.

Scootaloo backed away a couple of steps, trembling.

Rainbow Dash sighed, not meeting Scootaloo's eyes. "I know you made your promise to find me again, kid, but the Rainbow Dash you knew back then died about five-hundred years ago."

"No," Scootaloo moaned as she shook her head in tears. "You can't be gone. You just can't. You're here right now, right?" she asked through tears.

Rainbow Dash half-frowned at that. "I am, but I'm here because I've got nothing better to do at the moment. My prey can wait until daylight, and I am hunting. A pony."

Scootaloo averted her eyes. "What happened? How did the other you...die? Did...did Twilight do something to you to make you this way?"

Rainbow Dash chuckled. It was bitter and sadistic, and it was all Scootaloo needed to hear to know the answer was most definitely yes. "I turned heel. She turned face. Go figure," Rainbow commented casually.

Scootaloo blinked at that, a quick burst of hope that if Twilight could turn in such a way, maybe the old Rainbow Dash could still come back.

"She killed them," Rainbow Dash told Scootaloo seriously. "She killed my love, Fluttershy. She killed my other friends. Rarity. Pinkie Pie. Applejack. Spike. She killed them all, to force off my control. Well, she got her wish. But she thought that meant I would join her instead of making her pay for the rest of our eternal lives for what she did."

"Rainbow…" Scootaloo started. She ran up to her and hugged her forelimb. "Tell me what to do to get you back, and I'll do it. Please. If Twilight's changed the way you just said..."

Rainbow Dash placed a forelimb and both firmly and gently pushed Scootaloo back away from her. "My friends aren't coming back, Scoot, and neither am I."

With that, she took off, leaving Scootaloo with a knot in her stomach, full of dread and uncertainty. The filly shed a few more tears before wiping them and steeling her resolve. It would be hard to approach Twilight Sparkle without Rainbow's protection, but it had to be done.

Comments

[superfun]

I kind of hope Scoots somehow reconciles with Dash, even if that's highly unlikely

[Rainbow sparkle1]

10503333
I agree