Hotter Than Hell

by totallynotabrony

Chapter 6

Sunset stared at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were red and dry. Her hair felt a little crispy.

All these things were a small price to pay for the power she’d finally unlocked, but even then, she was starting to realize the limitations. She’d never asked to be a...whatever she was now. An enforcer?

Only her first time fully becoming the Ghost Rider wasn’t enough to truly explore what she could do, though if her skin burning away was going to hurt that much, she was disinclined to do it more often. It didn’t seem as if she could make the transformation happen without a trigger, either. Maybe that meant she would have to seek out evil.

The Rider hadn’t stopped until the morning. Was every night going to be like this?

Sunset stepped into the shower, grabbing her conditioner. While the water ran, she thought a little more about the events of the previous night. It was a strong mix of emotions. From being beaten to a pulp by Mac, then mentored by him; feeling her own skin burn off; the surge of raw power from the transformation; the unease of not being alone in her body; and then, the burning of a soul.

Sunset had effectively ended the man’s life, even as his body still breathed. Did he deserve it? Well...yes, she decided. Wait, decided? Now? After it was already done?

Everything was moving too fast, this power inside of her that was now controlling her actions, she couldn’t deny the power, the power she had wanted for so long and it was here she had just seen it first hand… but what had she traded for it? A power that was controlling her, instead of the other way around?

The problem was growing, and Sunset had no idea of how to control it. What was this power? And what the Tartarus, Hell, or other had she gotten herself into?

She had known that Lucifer wanted her labor in return for his favor, but finally doing it suddenly put her off. It wasn’t as if she didn’t get satisfaction from meting out punishment, but so far none of the lowlifes she had met had done anything significant to her. Why go to the trouble if she wasn’t getting something out of it, or removing an obstacle in her path?

Well, as long as Lucifer didn’t ask for too much, Sunset would have time to explore how to bend this power for her own use.

Finished with the shower, Sunset’s next priority was food. She felt famished, hollow, and that was despite drinking perhaps a gallon of water the moment she arrived home.

When she walked out of the bathroom, Lucifer was sitting at the kitchen table. The expression jumped out of her skin might have applied, if Sunset didn’t already know what that felt like. She was still surprised.

“I see that you found Macintosh,” he said.

Maybe it was Mac that had found Sunset, but she didn’t correct him. She was too busy covering her surprise and transitioning to accusation. “And he nearly killed me! How am I supposed to do my job if you just let someone interfere like that? You didn’t tell me what was going to happen! ‘Let the demon out. Feel the hellfire consume your soul.’ I didn’t know I had a soul until you took it!”

“The contract couldn’t have been more clear,” Lucifer said, voice refusing to rise to match her tone. “And I did answer every question you asked before you signed it. But Sunset, be honest here, selling your soul isn’t the only thing that led you to this point.”

He held her gaze for a moment while Sunset angrily gathered her reply, but then resumed speaking before she could rebut. “But that’s not why I’m here. I came to check on you, to see how you were doing after the first time you burned someone’s soul. I see that I needn’t have bothered. You aren’t someone who cares about other people.”

Part of Sunset wanted to contradict everything he said. Part of her remembered that she took pride in caring only for herself.

She turned away to open the refrigerator, hoping he would disappear when her back was turned. To her mild surprise, he actually did.

Sunset dumped the contents of her fridge out onto the kitchen table and dug in. The Ghost Rider needed energy, and it apparently came from her own body. She grumbled angrily even as she stuffed breakfast down her throat, hoping this wasn’t going to become a habit.

Later that morning, she rode her motorcycle to school, wearing her new jacket. She had just parked in the lot and was still astride the bike, taking off her helmet, when Silver came sprinting up to her. “Sunset! I thought you were dead!”

Well, considering the night she’d had, that might have actually been a better alternative. However, sensing an opportunity, Sunset put her angry internal monologue aside for the moment. She shook her hair out of the helmet, letting it cascade down her back. She smirked. “Do I look dead?”

Silver ducked her head in embarrassment, but then raised her eyes again. “I mean, I saw you get strangled by a chain and dragged away. What was I supposed to think? Who did that to you?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sunset said. “I took care of it.”

“O-okay…” Silver looked torn, but apparently decided that taking Sunset’s word for it and letting it go was easier than continuing to think about it. She hurriedly flipped through her notebook for Sunset’s schedule. “Today you were going to start your campaign for Princess of the Spring Fling.”

It was still a few months away - there was still snow on the ground after all - but it was never too early to lay plans. Besides, it was an opportunity to do her own thing, something she alone controlled.

At one of the passing periods, Silver slipped Sunset a note. I saw Fluttershy in the locker room. Sunset had been expecting this, and headed that way.

Fluttershy was alone, crouching over the open door of her locker. In her position, her swoosh of long pink hair nearly reached the floor. Her head snapped up when she heard Sunset come in. She stood as Sunset came over, but immediately stepped backwards, pressing her back to the wall of lockers as Sunset leaned in, resting one hand on the wall beside Fluttershy’s head.

“O-oh, hi Sunset,” Fluttershy stammered. “I-I like your jacket.”

“I thought I’d find you here,” Sunset said, smiling. “What have you been up to?”

Fluttershy concentrated mostly on her hands while speaking. “I was helping Rainbow plan a date with Applejack.”

“Where are they going?”

“Bowling.” Fluttershy told her the details. Sunset filed it away for later, just in case.

“That’s so cute, helping them out like that,” Sunset said. Fluttershy flushed. “But you know, you can’t forget we had something planned, too.”

“I’m s-sorry,” Fluttershy squeaked. “I didn’t know you didn’t like that cafe.”

“That’s okay,” Sunset soothed. “But you need to do better if you want to officially date me.”

Fluttershy would never admit it, but Sunset had figured out she was into bad boys, just too timid to talk to any actual boys. She was also easier to manipulate than just about anyone.

“I just f-fail so much,” Fluttershy whimpered. “Today some girls were making fun of me for leaving rabbit food lying around. I mean, I do keep rabbit food in my locker, but I wouldn’t just make a mess with it. I don't know who left rabbit food lying around. It wasn’t me, but they wouldn’t listen.”

The downside to stringing Fluttershy along was that she occasionally got comfortable enough to bring her problems to Sunset.

“Hey, it’s okay, you’re doing the best you can,” Sunset said. She leaned her face closer.

Fluttershy swallowed hard and closed her eyes, lips pursing. Sunset smirked and turned to walk out of the locker room, wondering how long Fluttershy would stand there like that until she realized.

Fluttershy was a decent source of information and gifts, but Sunset was growing bored of how easy she was to exploit. There was no challenge in it. Maybe now that Sunset was moving up in the world with the power of the Ghost Rider, she should look for other opportunities.

Like gaining full control of the Ghost Rider itself. So far, between Mac and Lucifer, she was still struggling, though Sunset would never admit that. She was never defeated, only set back.

No, Sunset wasn’t ready to admit that she regretted making the deal. She hadn’t yet explored all her options, and she would be damned - pun thoroughly unintended - if she gave up now, before she’d tried everything to bend the Spirit of Vengeance to her own will.

It didn’t seem that she was going to find whatever that was at school. Based on her observations so far, the Ghost Rider didn’t come out in the broad daylight. And if what she had learned the previous night was true, then she couldn’t just point it at Celestia.

It made Sunset wonder. How picky was the spirit? Could she engineer a situation that might force the issue? She decided to try it that night.

After school, Sunset headed for what she understood was the seedy part of town. The sun was still up, but she used the time to get a feel for the place. The human city of Canterlot was not bad, as human cities went, Sunset understood. As her encounter last night had proven, though, there were still criminals to be found.

Criminals? Well, that was a legal term. The people Sunset was hunting hadn’t necessarily been convicted by a court.

The sun was still up but dropping fast as she cruised through the Santa Louis neighborhood in east Canterlot. Despite the apparently-religious sounding name, it was decidedly the less desirable part of town. Even an outsider like Sunset could tell that at a glance. Things were just...worse.

The people included. Sunset prided herself on the ability to read faces, even while going by on the street, and she was already detecting some shifty eyes. Though, there was something else she noticed. It seemed as if she was getting hints of the feeling from the previous night, of evil in the air.

It wasn’t similar to a unicorn detecting magic in the air. This didn’t feel like magic, something that by itself could have an effect on the world. It was just an intangible darkness, that wasn’t visible, but was there nonetheless. The Spirit of Vengeance had granted Sunset the ability to notice it. It was an unclean, ugly feeling, one that she might have ordinarily shied away from instinctively, but now, it was the mark of prey.

That was also a new feeling, of being a hunter, unnatural for a natural herbivore. But Sunset wasn’t a pony anymore, was she? She’d even surpassed being a human.

Something changed suddenly. It wasn’t so big a shock that Sunset reacted, but she felt the difference. What was it? A sharpening of the senses? A prickle of hellfire?

She passed out of the shadow of a building back into the fading sunlight and the feeling abated, but then returned again on the next block. The night, Sunset realized. The Ghost Rider was still a demon, after all, and apparently couldn’t show its face under the sun. Well, dislike of the sun was something they both had in common she supposed, though was still irritated in discovering the limitation. What good was power if she couldn’t use it part of the time? At least it was winter and the nights were longer.

Sunset pulled up at a stop sign, pausing to let the engine idle and her mind contemplate. Her instincts tugged her in one direction. She deliberately turned the other.

The handlebars seemed to fight her briefly, or maybe it was a pothole, or maybe her imagination.

Down the street, she came to the lighted windows of Flim Flam Pawn Jam, a shop that was still open at this hour. Sunset had heard about it around school, how there were certain items available if one knew the right questions to ask. Nothing truly serious, but enough to fuel rumors among students, if any of them had actually visited the place before.

This was not where the demon was tugging her. But no one would miss this place and these people if they were gone. Leaving the bike at the curb, Sunset walked through the door.

There was the usual jumble of things on the shelves, the items people sold to pawn shops. The red-haired man behind the counter looked up from a magazine he was boredly reading and stood up straight as Sunset came in. He plastered on a high-effort fake smile and said, “Hi there little lady, what can I do for you today?”

“I’m interested in your special stock,” Sunset replied.

His expression changed subtly and he glanced her up and down. Maybe her outfit satisfied him that she wasn’t a cop or a kid. “Well then, let’s see what we have.”

He gestured for her to follow him and turned for a back room, calling ahead, “Brother, we have a customer.” Sunset did a few practice clenches of her fists, secure in her leather gloves, and followed him.

In the other room was an identical man, though this one had a mustache. Twins? Well, Sunset was confident she could handle both. The first brother walked over to the other and said in a lowered voice, “She wants to see the goods.”

In a practiced maneuver, they grabbed each other’s collars and pulled. Each of them was apparently wearing tear-away clothes and with a rip of velcro suddenly both wore nothing but leopard-print briefs.

Sunset blinked. “Is that it?”

Both of them looked slightly hurt. “Well, we have drugs too,” the one with the mustache scoffed.

This still wasn’t going how Sunset pictured, but she figured that was good enough. She started to crack her knuckles as the two brothers turned to open a cabinet.

“What’s your fancy? We’ve got the best locally-sourced THC. Maybe some E or LSD?” They spat out a couple of other acronyms Sunset didn’t recognize. But she didn’t need to as she approached the two of them from behind.

She grabbed the backs of their heads with each of her hands and yanked them off the floor, mashing their faces into the wall above the cabinet. Because of the mashing business, neither of them was able to get out an intelligible word, but it was clear she had achieved total surprise.

Sunset brought out the demon. Or tried to. It didn’t work. She thought back to how it had felt before, but somehow the power wouldn’t manifest.

Even strong as she was, holding up two struggling full-grown men for more than a couple of seconds was beginning to strain her arms. She made one last reach for the Spirit of Vengeance, failed, and smacked the two of them together before dropping them in a heap at her feet.

Why hadn’t it worked? Did she have to catch them in the act of something? Didn’t trying to sell her drugs count? Or did merely offering party drugs not count as doing evil?

She had ignored the tug of the spirit earlier, choosing her own path here. These men...weren’t evil. Or at least not soul-burnable evil. Strong as she was, she felt she couldn’t just kill them. And for some reason, that made Sunset angry.

It was a strange feeling to restrain herself because she wanted someone to know how much they were suffering at her hands, realize that she was only doing it for her own ego, and be furious at herself all the revelation. Petty torture was inefficient. It was what humans did to each other. It was beneath Sunset Shimmer, but she wanted it all the same, and that was quite a bit more soul-searching than she had bargained for tonight. Perhaps the real curse was being intelligent enough to realize her own flaws but also realizing she was powerless against herself to do anything about them.

Sunset crouched, grabbing both men by the neck and hauling them to her eye level. “I think we’ve learned a lesson here today.” She didn’t say who we included. “So I want you both to know that if I ever see you again, you’d better make it worth my while.”

That was nonspecific and vague, but Sunset was mostly preoccupied with holding back her own emotion at the moment and wasn’t up to stipulating too many conditions. At any rate, they weren’t going to forget her any time soon, and she was able to take some sort of solace in that.

Sunset noticed a nearby refrigerator that had swung open during the scuffle. She hadn’t come in here with the intention to steal anything from the brothers, nothing she could take would get their attention more than she already had, but it was the principle of the thing. Figuring she was going to be thirsty later anyway, she grabbed a soda from the fridge and walked out. She also kicked the front door glass out instead of opening it.

Outside, the bike started just as she touched the handlebars with her fingertips, as if it was waiting for her. Waiting for her to do the right thing.

Well, no, not the right thing. That would be not getting involved in any of this to start with. Waiting for her to do what she was told.

Sunset went through another round of self-reflective anger and got on the bike. This time, she felt herself converging again with the track she had been supposed to take. At least part of that was feeling her skin begin to prickle with heat.

Before she could get on with it, though, Mac pulled up on a bike of his own, probably the one Sunset had seen before but at the time been too preoccupied with being beaten to examine. It was much older than hers, and might very well have come from the same junkyard where they’d met. He seemed perfectly at ease on it, however, almost as if man and machine were as one.

“Looks like you found him,” Mac said in that idle drawl of his.

Annoyed, both at being interrupted and Mac speaking before he was spoken to, Sunset tersely replied, “Who?”

“Last night. Smelled like a rapist.”

“Smelled like?”

Mac shrugged. “Ya get a sense of these things after a while.”

Sunset didn’t give him the satisfaction of an answer. She was so done with Mac, even at only the second time meeting him. If nothing else, it was because in whatever world Lucifer had taken him from they swore to Celestia just like Equestria.

“Aren’t you gonna ask me?” he said.

“What?”

“If last night was a rapist, what’s this?” Mac tilted his head side to side, as if contemplating what he smelled on the wind, and answered his own question. “Nothin’ too special. Maybe an abuser.” He looked at her and let slip what might have passed for a cocky smile on his face. “Race you?”

Sunset scoffed contemptuously, finally getting the chance to do something she was actually practiced at tonight. “If you care that much, you can have it.”

Something - a voice? - twinged at the back of her mind, angry and eager for action. Oh, did the spirit not like that? Too bad, it wasn’t the one in charge. Though, Sunset well remembered what had happened the previous night, when it was. Sunset was supposed to learn from him, following Lucifer’s order. That dissuaded her even more.

Mac leaned over and poked her shoulder. “Tag.”

He twisted the throttle of his bike and roared away.

Memories of Mac beating the tar out of her flashed across Sunset’s mind. He was toying with her, so condescending that he couldn’t even take her seriously as another Rider.

At least Sunset agreed with the little voice in her head this time. And in the fraction of a second it took for all this to go through her mind, she knew that she couldn’t help but rise to the challenge.

The bike seemed to go into gear of its own accord, but Sunset was going to do that anyway. It leaped forward under her touch, front tire not even turning against the ground before it was up in the air. Sunset instinctively shifted her weight forward to compensate, even as the bike accelerated after Mac.

Sunset was gratified to see that she was gaining on whatever bike Mac was riding, even though he had a headstart. The two of them blew through a stop sign, dodging a car by ducking into the other lane. Mac looked over his shoulder as she drew even with him.

He didn’t seem surprised or startled that she was catching up. If anything, he looked satisfied. Maybe because she had done exactly what he’d dared her to do. Or maybe, because he’d planned it. Mac and his bike both went up in flames.

Another Rider was a strange sight to see from the outside. Mac’s skin was gone, replaced by fire and bone. His motorcycle changed too, stretching, taking on a more sinister appearance, and actually gaining chrome.

Though she was a Rider herself, that didn’t mean Sunset wasn’t startled, and she reactively grabbed the first object at hand - the can of soda taken from Flim and Flam - and threw it at him. The can burst apart, boiling away to steam, in the heat of the fire before it ever touched him.

With a howl of laughter, Mac the Rider sped ahead on his hellacious motorcycle, leaving a trail of fire in his wake. Sunset, still momentarily stunned, did her best to keep up, which wasn’t nearly enough.

She was at least able to tell where he was going. The signal of evil that was drawing her in too felt stronger the closer she got. It did subtly feel different than last time. Maybe Mac really could tell what kind of malevolence it was.

The small house looked as if it hadn’t seen a lick of paint in decades. The yard was almost that bad. When Sunset screeched to a halt, Mac was already inside. His motorcycle vibrated, still on fire, from where he had carelessly left it in the yard. The scattered snow around it had already melted and the grass underneath was rapidly singeing.

The bike stood upright, as if a trained steed, waiting, if restlessly. As Sunset climbed off her own motorcycle, she felt the handlebars nudge against her hands. Not entirely trusting it, she was suddenly distracted by the heat from her own body. Stumbling towards the house, it only got worse until the flames erupted.

The Ghost Rider was free once more. Sunset’s flesh burning away hurt just as much as the first time. That didn’t stop her from following Mac’s trail into the house.

The Rider form of Mac was just as large. Maybe larger. And with flames and all, he dominated the kitchen, to the point that the woman suspended by her throat was completely hidden behind him when Sunset walked in. It also took her another moment to notice the tiny form of a girl curled into a terrified ball in the hallway. Even from here, Sunset could see bruises on her skin.

“Guilty,” Mac was just saying. “Look into my eyes.”

The woman’s breath hitched, but she couldn’t even get a scream out before her soul began to incinerate. Mac dropped her, and she fell in a heap, light already fading from her eyes.

The girl let out a choked sob. Mac ignored her, turning away.

His eyes fell on Sunset, and even in her Rider form, she had no time to react before he was already across the room, skeletal fingers closing around her bare vertebrae.

It was a strange feeling, being choked even though she had no lungs to breathe. It almost distracted Sunset from being slammed right through the wall of the house and into the backyard.

Mac, or the Ghost Rider that replaced him, pulled Sunset up, to his own eye level, the fire in the sockets of his skull boring into her own.

“Guilty,” he growled, in a voice so low and deep that Sunset more felt the words than actually heard them.

“But I don’t have a soul to burn.” Had those words come from her mouth? Sunset barely recognized her own voice, not to mention she hadn’t consciously said it.

“I know,” said Mac, seeming to smile even without lips. “The Penance Stare doesn’t work on other Riders.” For a moment when he had attacked her, Sunset thought he might have lost control completely, but no, this was still him flaunting his power over her.

Even as Sunset’s anger rose, Mac let her go. Both of them extinguished, steam rising in the night air.

Both motorcycles approached. They, too, had returned to normal, but clearly still maintained some sort of unholy power. Sunset was gratified to see that her bike didn’t seem too friendly with Mac’s.

She unconsciously touched her throat as she swung a leg over her bike, remembering vividly how Mac had pronounced her guilty. Sure, she didn’t go out of her way to be nice, but did that make her actually evil?

She tipped the mirror to look at her face. So what if it did? On the one hand, she had now seen firsthand the consequences. On the other, she was the consequences.

“Be seein’ ya,” Mac said.

“Wait,” said Sunset, glancing back at the house and the hole in the wall their bodies had made. “What about cleanup? Isn’t it a problem if someone sees us?”

“I don’t worry myself with the details.”

“What about that kid? What’s she going to do without a mother - even if she was being abused.”

Mac shrugged. “Ah did my job. It ain’t my problem. Fifty-fifty Ah’ll even see her again, a few years down the line.”

Maybe Sunset wasn’t actually evil, if she was worried about this. But she had to admit, Mac’s words sounded like the easy answer. It wasn’t her problem.

Besides, who adopted orphans? Princess Celestia.

“And Ah’ll see you again tomorrow,” Mac said. “You ain’t ready yet.”

Comments

[zachary12]

nice work

[Sr Face Tear]

Really driving the point home that sunset being a ghost rider is pointless, like i thought it wasn't going to be obvious but you're just rubbing it in our faces how much this story doesn't need to exist in the context of this story.

[Moonlight Tome]

Boy, Sunset is really arrogant, isn't she? Thinks she can control a force from hell. You might be a protégé of Celestia, but you are not as good as you think you are!