> Ragazze Equestri
>  by rillegas08
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> 01: Non Risica, Non Rosica
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

After being alive for well over a thousand years, Princess Celestia had a long list of mistakes and regrets, many of which could never be rectified, as the ponies she had wronged had died or disappeared before she could seek redemption. Nearly all of the mistakes and regrets were the unintentional consequences of holistic intentions. Showing Sunset Shimmer – her star pupil – a magical portal that led to different dimensions was merely the most recent addition to that list. Sunset had glimpsed an image of herself as a powerful alicorn princess, and had become obsessed with not only attaining that apparent destiny, but had begun shunning other ponies in order to get it. 

“Princess Celestia!” Celestia’s attention was drawn to a purple unicorn mare with a gray mane who had just run into the throne room. Two pegasus guards moved to block her path, but Celestia held up a hoof and they let the mare continue. 

“What is it, Novella?” 

“Sunset Shimmer is in the dark magic section of the library and has already read several books!” 

Celestia stood up and started walking through the throne room, addressing the others in the throne room. “My apologies, everypony. This could be an emergency.” 

Within minutes, Princess Celestia, Novella, and two guards arrived at the library’s restricted section. 

“The Crystal Mirror,” they heard Sunset say. “Every thirty moons, a portal will open to... another world?” 

“That’s not really for you to know, now is it?” Princess Celestia stated, causing Sunset to jump in surprise. She quickly regained her composure and turned to face her mentor. 

“How dare you keep this kind of magic from me!” the young orange mare with a bright red and yellow mane said angrily. “You know that I’m ready for this, that I can be great!” 

“You could be great,” Celestia replied. I thought I saw compassion and sincerity in you, but it was nothing but ambition. You’re being selfish. You need to step back and reflect –” 

“I’m selfish?” Sunset threw the book at her mentor, who easily cast a shield to deflect it. “That book right there says I could become as powerful as an alicorn princess. I could rule here. It’s selfish of you to keep me from my rightful place!” Celestia thought she saw Sunset’s eyes glisten with wetness. Was it a tear of sorrow, or of frustration? “I deserve to stand beside you and be your equal, if not your better.” The glisten disappeared, replaced with a look of determination. “Make me a princess.” 

“No,” Celestia simply replied. “Being a princess must be earned. I have been trying to teach you everything you need to know, but you’ve turned from it. Every time you say you ‘deserve’ to get something without effort just proves to me that you are not ready.” 

Celestia took a breath and continued. 

“Sunset Shimmer,” Princess Celestia declared, “I am removing you from the position of my pupil. If we cannot get past this, your studies end here. You are welcome to stay in Canterlot, but you are no longer welcome in the castle.” 

Sunset became more and more visibly angry as she listened to her mentor become her former mentor. “We’ll never get past this because you aren’t seeing how great I deserve to be. Is that really all you have to say to me?” 

“No. The guards will escort you out.” 

“This is the biggest mistake you’ll make in your entire life,” Sunset declared the two royal guards escorted Sunset Shimmer out of the library. Celestia looked at a nearby silk and velvet tapestry depicting her defeat of Nightmare Moon, magically sending her younger sister to the moon almost a thousand years earlier, and hanged her head in shame. 

“One of many,” she muttered to herself. 

Celestia’s head remained lowered as she walked down the red-carpeted halls back to the throne room. Despite her reverie, her ear turned toward the sound of a groan coming through a nearby open door. Celestia looked up and her eyes widened. This door belonged to the room where she kept the Crystal Mirror. Hurrying inside, Princess Celestia saw both guards on the ground near the mirror, groaning and dazed; Sunset Shimmer had overpowered them with a surprise attack and escaped through the portal. 

“Oh, Sunset Shimmer... no...” She moved to help the guards up. 

“She took us by surprise and just... just... jumped in the mirror. I don’t know.” 

“Shh, it’s fine.” 

Celestia looked at the mirror. The surface shimmered despite facing away from the window behind it, and she knew it had closed. Sunset Shimmer wouldn’t be able to return for another thirty moons, and Princess Celestia wanted to keep a close eye on the mirror if her pupil were to ever return. 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 


Sunset Shimmer stumbled through the other side of the portal in the night, a marble pedestal for a statue of a horse, and landed on her hands and knees. She groaned and sat back against the marble pedestal she’d just passed through. After a second Sunset’s eyes opened wide and she turned around, pushing her hands against the cold stone. 

“No... no!” 

Sunset sighed and leaned her head against the cold stone, and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath, reminding herself that all she had to do was wait for thirty moons until it opened again, but she had no idea if time in this world passed the same as it had in Equestria. She’d have to pay attention to the moon cycles in this world. 

When she opened her eyes, she looked at the changes that had happened to her body while she traveled through the portal’s vortex. Her front hooves had transformed into hands with fingers, and she could feel similar smaller appendages in her boots. Her muzzle had shortened, but the most significant change, in her opinion, was the sudden lack of a horn. Sunset Shimmer could no longer cast spells and use magic, but mor importantly, there was no way she could become an alicorn princess if she didn’t have a horn! 

“You lied to me,” she muttered to the disabled portal. “When I looked in you that time, I saw myself as an alicorn princess, not this... this thing that I’ve become.” 

After some time, Sunset sat on the ground with a sigh, her back against the pedestal, and did what she could to tend to her scrapes. It wasn’t long before she heard some noise nearby, and she moved over, peeking her head out from the side of the pedestal to see what was going on. 

She saw two girls at a nearby street corner, and it looked like they were arguing. The taller one had pale hair and was wearing a brown jacket with a furry collar, and the shorter one had dyed streaks of every color in her long blonde hair, tied back into a ponytail. The taller one pushed the other, who held up a finger, as if telling her to stop. The taller one pushed her again, and got punched in the face as a result. 

Sunset tried to stand and walk over, but she was too unfamiliar with her new body to do much other than lean against the pedestal and watch. If she couldn’t go over to join the fight, she might as well watch and learn how to fight in this new bipedal body. 

Though the taller one seemed to throw stronger punches, the multi-haired girl was more agile, dodging and blocking the other’s attacks more often than getting hit by them. Suddenly, the girl with the ponytail dodged another attack and sprinted around her, pausing only to turn around and make a flying kick against her opponent. The taller girl, who had started to turn around to continue the fight, caught the full brunt of the attack on her chest, knocking her to the ground. Sunset expected her to get back up, but to her surprise, she stayed on the ground. Sunset guessed that her new body was weaker than her pony body, as a kick to the torso on another pony would hurt but not end a fight. She remembered the guards she had overpowered just before jumping through the portal. 

Well, most of the time, anyway, she mused. 

The girl with the multi-colored hair started walking toward where Sunset was leaning against the pedestal, and their eyes met. The mystery girl glanced behind her and started jogging toward her. Sunset’s heart started pumping faster with adrenaline, unsure if she was going to fight her as well. Given what she had just seen and her unfamiliarity with her new body, she knew she’d lose. 

“Uhh, how much of that did you see?” the girls asked, slowing down before reaching Sunset, whose pulse did not slow down as quickly. 

“Pretty much all of it,” Sunset replied. “You’re quite a fighter.” 

“Thanks! I am pretty awesome. I like your hair.” 

Sunset held a lock of her hair in her hand, seeing she’d retained the colors of her mane through the portal, though no longer as bright as it had been. Her hair was now auburn with streaks of blonde all throughout. 

“Thanks. It’s natural.” 

“Man, I wish my hair was naturally multicolored. That’d be awesome.” 

“What’s your name? I’ve been calling you ‘the girl with the multi-colored hair’ in my head, but that’s quite a mouthful.” 

The girl with the multi-colored hair thought for a moment, as if wondering whether or not she could trust the auburn and blonde-haired girl, then replied, “Arianna. My friends call me something else, but we’re not exactly friends yet. We just met, and I don’t know if you can even be trusted.” 

Hayseeds, there’s no way she could’ve known what I did in Equestria, is there? 

“My name’s Sunset Shimmer.” 

Arianna burst out laughing. “Okay, you’ve gotta be pulling my leg with that one. A name like that has got to be a nickname.” 

“Nope, that’s my real name. I’m...” Sunset paused a moment to consider whether or not she should tell Arianna where she’d come from. She didn’t exactly have a way to prove it now that the portal was closed. “I’m not from around here.” 

“No kidding. Listen, most people around here don’t treat new people all that well. Gilda’s a prime example of that.” Arianna gestured behind her where Gilda was finally getting up, holding her chest. Sunset thought she might come running after Arianna for another round, so she grabbed her hand and pulled her around the pedestal so Gilda couldn’t see them. 

“Hey, what was that for?” 

“I saw her standing up and thought that if she saw you she’d want to keep fighting. Or worse, she’ll see me as an easier target and fight me, and I know she’d win that. You gave her a hard enough time, and I’m pretty sure you could kick my flank.” 

“What’s a flank?” 

“Your rear end. You’ve never heard that term before?” 

“Nah. You really aren’t from around here, huh?” Sunset shook her head. “Where are you from, anyway?” 

“You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” 

“Try me!” 

“You didn’t believe me when I told you my name just now.” 

“Hmm, good point. Speaking of which, you’re gonna have to go by a different name if you don’t want people to make fun of you for it.” 

“Like what?” 

“Dunno. We’ll figure it out later. Do you have anywhere to stay tonight? It’s pitch black, and even Gilda shouldn’t be out this late, and she’s a year older than me.” 

Sunset looked at Arianna, guessing that they were about the same age. “How old are you?” 

“I just turned eleven...” she counted on her fingers, “exactly four weeks ago. Come on, let’s go to my place. It’s too cold to be outside in November.” 

They start walking, etc. 

“So, what started the fight with Gilda?” 

Arianna crossed her arms, and Sunset had a feeling it had more to do with what had happened with Gilda than with the cold night air. “We wanted to start a street gang together but we have different ideas on how to run it. She says” she wants to work together, but she keeps shooting down my ideas.” 

“Why not start your own gang then?” Sunset asked. “If she’s not going to give you what you were promised, find your own way to your destiny.” 

“That sounds tricky,” Arianna replied. “I’m still officially part of Gilda’s gang, and I’d have to get out without getting my ass kicked too bad.” 

“Couldn’t you beat her again like you did earlier?” 

Arianna shook her head. “My win had some luck involved. She wasn’t expecting me to fight back.” 

“Then I’ll figure out how you can leave without getting hurt. I’m not much of a fighter, but I was always the smartest student at school.” 

Arianna smiled and put her hand on Sunset’s shoulder. “You know what? I will start my own gang, and you’re gonna be my second-in-command. If you’re as smart as you say you are, we could be unstoppable!” 

Arianna brought Sunset to her house, sneaking them both through the back door past a babysitter sitting on the sofa and watching TV, facing away from them. Arianna held a finger to her lips and led Sunset to her room, closing the door behind them. 

“My parents are out tonight and got a babysitter to watch me. I snuck out while she was watching TV.” 

“She’s not very observant, is she?” 

“That’s why she’s my favorite!” 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

Arianna and Sunset spent the next few days gathering information and developing a plan for getting Arianna safely out of Gilda’s gang. They compiled a list of Arianna’s friends and classmates who might be useful members of their own gang. Soon, it was time for Arianna to act. 

After school let out that Friday, Arianna took the school bus back to her house to get Sunset before walking through a forested park toward Gilda’s house. 

“Now or never, Sofia,” Arianna said, using the new name they’d come up with for her. “After I do this, there’s no going back.” 

“Look on the bright side, Dash,” Sunset replied, using Arianna’s nickname. “You’ve got backup this time.” 

Arianna nodded, and the two girls continued in silence until they arrived at Gilda’s house. Arianna walked up to the door and knocked. Soon the door was opened by Gilda, having just gotten home from school herself. 

“Dash? What are you doing here? And who’s this?” 

“Sofia’s a new friend,” Arianna replied. “As for what I’m doing here, well...” She glanced over to Sunset, who nodded. “I don’t wanna be in your gang anymore. It was supposed to belong to both of us, but you keep ignoring my ideas. So I’m leaving, and creating my own.” 

Gilda scoffed and pointed at Sunset. “With who? This weak-ass bitch?” 

“Physical strength isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Sunset said. “I thought for sure you’d learned that lesson earlier this week when Dash knocked you on your ass near the high school.” 

“Ah, shit. You saw that?” 

“I have my ways.” No reason she needs to know it was pure coincidence. 

Gilda’s eyes widened slightly, almost undetectable to anyone not looking for nervous tics. Sunset kept a straight face but smiled inwardly, having noticed the change. 

“With my help – oh, and Phillip’s and Diane’s help, as well as some others we’ve already started recruiting – Dash could develop a very powerful street gang. Better than yours ever could be, unless you find someone as smart as me.” Sunset stepped forward and put her hand on Gilda’s shoulder, giving a big, fake smile. “Good luck with that.” 

“Later, Gilda,” said Arianna, and both Arianna and Sunset turned away and walked back toward the forested park, giving no heed to anything Gilda might shout. Sunset held up a small mirror she’d brought with them in case Gilda threw something at them. Fortunately she didn’t, and Sunset put the mirror away when they got deeper into the trees. 

“As I hoped, she’s too shocked to react right away, but I would bet she’s coming to her senses soon. We should probably go faster in case she decides to follow us.” 

“We should definitely run,” Arianna replied. “She knows where I live.” 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

Luckily for Arianna and Sunset, Gilda chose not to follow them. After some time standing in the doorway watching them leave, she turned and went back inside, letting the door slam behind her as she made her way up the stairs to her room and laid on her bed. 

Phillip and Diane were two of Arianna’s classmates she and Gilda had decided to recruit into their gang, and now Arianna was taking them back. Phillip was smart and strong, and Diane was, as far as Gilda could understand, a physical manifestation of chaos who often seemed to be really lucky. They had been the only two other members of their four-person gang so far, but now that dream of a street gang had died. 

Gilda spent the rest of the afternoon laying in her bed, wondering what she could do, when her stomach growled. She sat up on the edge of the bed, then stood up to go down to the kitchen to get some food when her eye caught glimpse of something she’d forgotten she had: a business card for the Melodia crime family. 

Several months ago, Gilda was walking down the street when she saw a young girl with long black hair walking across the street. She had also noticed a car coming down the road too fast, and with a high chance the car would hit the girl. She called out to the girl to watch out, and thankfully the girl ran the rest of the way across the road as the car zoomed past where she had been standing seconds before. 

“Thank you,” the girl said, catching her breath. 

“No sweat,” Gilda replied, and started walking away until she heard the girl’s voice again. 

“Wait one moment, please.” Gilda turned back toward the girl. “My name is Octavia Melodia, daughter of Lorenzo Melodia. He asked me to give one of these to people who did me a favor, so that he could return the favor someday.” Octavia held out a business card for Gilda to take. 

Gilda picked up the card from her dresser and looked at it. Perhaps if she couldn’t build her own street gang, she could join a more experienced group and develop her training. 

It was time to call in that favor.
> 02: Avere le Mani in Pasta
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Over the next two years, Arianna and Sunset’s gang grew in number and in strength. Sunset, now going by the moniker Sofia Speranza, confided in her new ally Arianna Bolt about her past, how she used to be a unicorn pony and had arrived in this world through a magical portal which was now closed after a falling out with her former mentor, though she didn’t see a reason to give her the full backstory. Arianna gave herself the task of coming up with the name for the gang. 

“The high school’s mascot is the Wondercolt,” she’d said one day. “Maybe we could go with that?” 

Sunset didn’t take much time to think about it. “I don’t know, Dash. That sounds more like a boy band than a street gang.” 

“I got another one: the Rainbooms.” 

“That’s better. Like an explosion.” 

Their first two recruits were Phillip Smith and Diane Pinkerton, both of whom were initially going to be in Gilda and Arianna’s gang, but followed Arianna after she left. Contrary to what Sunset had led Gilda to believe, they’d only recruited Phillip and Diane after that afternoon chat with Gilda. 

Phillip – who went by the name Flash while in the gang – was an athletic kid, strong and agile for his age due to regular karate and guitar lessons, where Arianna had met him. His naturally jet black hair would sometimes appear to look blue, depending on the light. His parents were financially well off and liked giving their son gifts. The Smiths were the unknowing source of the Rainboom’s funding, at least until the gang started earning its own money. 

Diane Pinkerton – nicknamed Pinkie due to her surname and the fact that she always wore a lot of pink – had been one of Arianna’s friends for years, though Arianna hadn’t told Sunset much about her, other than her frizzy black hair and that she was a strange girl. 

“First thing you should know is Diane has very frizzy black hair. It’s so frizzy it’s literally impossible to keep is straight longer than a few moments. Second, she’s... weird, but in a good way. She’s hyper and friendly, but weirdly lucky all the time.” 

“Sounds like she could be a good distraction if we need one.” 

Arianna grinned. “Oh, she’s great at creating distractions. We would have sleepovers sometimes and she always got the babysitter distracted enough to let me slip out to hang out with Gilda for a few hours. Babysitter never realized a thing." 

“Either she’s really good at what she does, or your babysitters are all pretty dumb.” 

“I like to think it’s a bit of both." 

As prepubescent teenagers, there wasn’t much the Rainbooms could do. They knew they had to start taking up odd jobs so Phillip’s parents wouldn’t notice he wasn’t using his allowance as often as he had been. Most jobs they took were providing protection for children's birthday parties, which usually entailed breaking up fights, cleaning something up, or getting a parent if they couldn’t fix a problem. It wasn’t hard work, but it was work nonetheless. 

One of the first things the Rainbooms did was forge identification and documentation for Sunset as Sofia Speranza, a natural-born citizen who was orphaned when she was ten. With these in hand, Sunset was able to eventually open a bank account for herself and one for the gang which they would all contribute to, with the eventual plan to make that account independent of any of them in order to keep their future crimes unconnected to their personal accounts. 

All the while, Sunset never forgot the portal in the marble pedestal, and what lay beyond it. 


~~~~~~~~~~
 

Spring is a beautiful time of year. Snow melts, exposing the grass to grow bright and green. Animals large and small that spent the winter hibernating begin to wake up and scavenge, often with baby animals in tow. Birds that traveled to warmer climates begin returning, bringing with them sweet songs while sitting in the budding trees. 

None of these were on Sunset’s mind. It was April, and most of those things had already happened the month before. Sofia, instead, was walking toward the marble statue in front of Canterlot High School, the statue she’d passed through almost two and a half years earlier. She had followed the moon cycles, counting each one until today, the first day of the thirtieth moon. 

After waiting for some cars to pass the intersection, Sunset hurried across and made her way to the statue. As she had dozens of times before, she looked at the stallion on top of the pedestal, carved as if it was rearing back to attack something with its front hooves. If she had noticed the horse on top the night she arrived, she might have been afraid that the guards had followed her through the portal to bring her back to face justice. 

Sunset zipped up her coat and looked up into the sky at the moon. Although it was still day, the moon still appeared in the sky, one of the many differences between this world and Equestria, where the sun and moon were moved with magic and were never in the sky at the same time. 

Sunset placed her palm against the cold stone pedestal, and after a moment her hand pushed through. She quickly pulled her hand back, not wanting to alert any ponies near the mirror that someone was on the other side. The worst case scenario would be if Princess Celestia was looking at the mirror when she put her hoof through. She’d definitely be screwed if that happened. 

Sunset leaned against the corner of the statue’s pedestal, one of the non-portal services and let out a soft sigh. Today was going to be the day she returned to Equestria, but now that it had arrived she was having second thoughts. The portal was open for three days, but could Sunset really justify leaving the gang she’d helped build, especially when they would be starting high school at Canterlot High the next fall, where they could continue recruiting new members and growing in strength. 

As much as she didn’t want to admit it – especially to Princess Celestia if she was about to come through the portal any second - Dash was becoming more than just her ally, but her first real friend. Back in Equestria, Princess Celestia had tried teaching her about friendship. 

>[Princess Celestia walked with her student down one of the castle halls. “Sunset Shimmer, I have heard that you’re not getting along well with the other students. We’ve talked about the fact that personal relationships –” 

“Personal relationships?” Sunset scoffed. “Who needs anypony? The most important thing in life is to be the best.” 

“We’ve talked about friendship and its importance before,” Celestia continued, “and we’ve discussed that you need to start opening yourself up to new friends.”

Sunset had dismissed friendship, and yet here she was in this world, starting to make friends and coming up with other reasons to stay in this admittedly dystopian world.

“That’s the real issue here, isn’t it?” Sunset asked herself. “I have to decide between returning to a nearly perfect world where I’ll be a fugitive for assaulting those guards and unable to achieve my destiny, and this world full of crime and corruption but I’ll be with my first real friends while forging my own way to my destiny.” Sunset chuckled. “And just like that, I’ve made my decision. Destiny, here I come.”

Sunset walked away from the statue, back across the street. She wouldn’t pay attention to it again until that September when she, Arianna, and other Rainbooms would be enrolled as freshmen at Canterlot High School.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


It was the day of Canterlot High School’s Freshman Fair, a festival for the new students of CHS where they could meet their classmates and discover student groups they could join such as sports teams, drama club, and bands. Police officers were positioned all throughout the school’s front lawn to ensure the safety of the students, but even so many students barely ventured past the groups they were interested in before returning inside the school.

“Looks like no one feels like mingling,” Sunset said.

“Yeah, that’s pretty common in Canterlot,” Arianna replied, not looking up from the signup sheet for the soccer team she was signing up for. Crime is everywhere.” She stood up and whispered low to Sunset, “And I’d bet anything at least half of these cops are on the mafia’s payroll.”

“If not all of them, that is,” Sunset added. She looked around and recognized Phillip’s hairstyle across the courtyard. “I see Phillip. No doubt Diane is nearby too. I’m gonna go over and see what he’s up to.”

“Meet you inside the school, then?”

Sunset nodded and cut across the grass to the other side of the courtyard, ignoring the rest of the booths for the school’s sports teams. She found Flash by the martial arts booth. 

“Hey.” 

Flash looked up from the signup sheet and smiled. “Good to see you, Sofia. How’ve you been?” 

“Good. Have you seen Diane around yet?” 

“Might as well pick a booth and start walking around,” he answered. “I’ve seen her a few times, always at a different booth. This one, band, sports, gardening club... it’s almost like she wants to be part of every club.” 

Sunset laughed. “If anyone were able to join every club, it’d surely be her. But we’d better stop her before she does. Today’s also about finding more recruits for our own little group.” She stood up on her toes, looking around for Diane’s easily recognizable frizzy hair. “What are you signing up for, anyway? Don’t you already know karate?” 

“I do, but this isn’t karate,” he answered. “It’s an Indonesian form of offensive martial arts called penkak sillit.” 

“Pencak silat,” the girl at the booth corrected his pronunciation. 

“Sorry, pencak silat. Thanks. A lot of martial arts have similarities, but each type is useful in different ways.” 

“Karate is defensive,” said the girl at the booth, eager to convey her knowledge on the subject, “focusing more on blocking attacks, whereas pencak silat focuses more on using your whole body to attack. It can even incorporate weapons.” 

“That’ll be useful. Anyway, when you’re done, meet up with Arianna inside. I’ll keep looking for Diane.” 

She turned away and started walking around the courtyard again, looking for her ally, but it wasn’t too long before she realized she kept getting drawn toward the statue of the stallion. 

“We meet again, Mr. Stallion.” 

“You talk to statues too?” Sunset heard a familiar chipper voice behind her, and turned around to see Diane. 

“Hello, Diane. Where’ve you been?” 

“Looking at all the different booths," Diane replied. “Did you know there’s a student group for breeding carniverous plants?” 

“I didn’t but that seems like an odd group to advertise to incoming freshman.” 

“I know, right? I’m gonna try to join all of them.” 

“All right, just make sure you have time for our own student group.” Pinkie looked at Sunset and blinked. After a moment of hesitation, Sunset continued. “The Rainbooms?” 

“Oh, yeah, totally. I always have time for everything I do.” 

“Lucky girl, you are." 

Arianna appeared at the end of the aisle and hurried toward Diane and Sunset. Her eyes looked like they were filled with a combination of determination and fear. “Sofia, we might have a problem.” 

“What is it?” 

“You know how pretty much everything in this town is controlled by the Melodia crime family?” 

“Uh, duh.” 

“What’s up?” Diane asked. 

“One of our classmates is Octavia Melodia, daughter of the Melodia patriarch!” 

Sunset put her hand to her chin. “That could cause some trouble in the future. Where is she?” 

“She just walked into the school, escorted by two associates. I already told Phillip to tail them.” Arianna answered. “Her dad can definitely afford to send her to Crystal Prep Academy, plus it’s much closer to where they live. The Melodias might be up to something. Do you think they heard about our group?” 

“I don’t see how,” Sunset replied. “We’ve been pretty secretive about it the last couple years. The only people who know are the four of us. Well, and Gilda, but we haven’t heard from her since she and Arianna went their separate ways, and she doesn’t seem all that bright. As far as we know she’s not connected to the Melodias in any way. 

“Let’s act normal around her for now,” she continued. “We’ll keep an eye on her and I’ll talk to her before the week is done. That should give us some time to gather information, and me some time to figure out what to talk to her about.” 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

Sunset and the other Rainbooms tailed Octavia through classes as they had planned. All four were lucky enough to share a lunch period together, and even luckier that Octavia was in the same lunch period. Octavia was still escorted by her father’s associates, even during lunch, which gave Sunset an idea, and she didn’t even need a second day of following her to get it. 

“Flash, stay here,” she said, carrying her tray to the table they were all at but not sitting down. “Dash, Pinkie, and I will go sit with Octavia and introduce ourselves.” 

“What about the associates?” he asked. 

“That’s why I’m bringing Pinkie. I’m hoping we’ll be lucky.” 

“You know,” Arianna said, “most organizations don’t rely on getting lucky. It’s kinda a surefire way to lose.” 

"We’re not relying on getting lucky,” Sunset replied, “we’re relying on being lucky. There’s not much difference, but there is a difference.” 

“Good luck, then,” said Flash, who returned to his meal. The three girls made their way across the lunchroom toward Octavia and the associates. As they approached, they realized that aside from the associates, the crime boss’s daughter was sitting alone at her table; the other students, it seemed, were afraid to approach her with them surrounding her. One of the associates noticed the approaching girls and signaled to his partner, who turned around and held out his arm to stop them. 

Diane smiled and held out her hand. “Hi! I’m Diane! What’s your name?” 

The associate was caught off guard and looked over at his partner. 

“It’s okay, guys,” Sunset said. “You can relax. We just saw this girl sitting alone and wanted to be friendly.” 

“It’s all right, sirs,” said Octavia. Sunset expected an Italian accent given her family, or the same accent as everyone else, but instead it sounded British, which made Sunset curious. “They’re thirteen years old. There’s a very low chance they’ll turn out to be threats during lunch period in their first week of high school, they’re nothing you cannot handle.” 

“Very well. We’ll be close.” 

“Thank you.” The two men moved to the other side of the table and let the girls sit together. Sunset and Arianna sat down across from Octavia, and Diane sat closer to the associates. 

“You never got around to telling me your name,” she said. Sunset chuckled. 

“And thank you as well,” Octavia continued. “Father wanted to make sure I was safe here.” 

“Your father is Salvatore Melodia, patriarch of the Melodia famiglia, right?" 

“I was hoping nobody would know so soon.” 

“It’s a bit difficult not to make the connection when you arrive escorted by some of his employees.” 

“Why are you here, anyway?” Arianna asked. Sunset gave her an annoyed look, which went unnoticed. “Your dad’s filthy rich and can afford Crystal Prep, plus it’s closer to where you live, isn’t it?” 

“Father thought it best to enroll me here,” Octavia replied. “He’s concerned about what the Crystal Prep students might do to me if they knew I was his daughter. Many of them are part of the other crime families in the region, and some of them would jump at the chance to hold me for ransom.” 

Now there’s an idea, Sunset thought to herself. 

“Sounds like what you need are some friends,” Sunset suggested instead. “Kids your age who can help keep you safe so you don’t have to have an escort every day.” Sunset glanced over to the two associates, who had somehow become enthralled with Diane doing sleight of hand tricks. Sunset smiled back at Octavia and held out her hand. “I’m Sofia Speranza.” 

Octavia smiled and shook her hand. “Italian?” 

“Full-blooded, as far as mia famiglia knows,” Sunset lied. “Could be some Spanish in there, but we don’t really know for sure. This is Arianna Bolt next to me, and the charming girl entertaining your bodyguards is Diane Pinkerton.” 

“Pinkerton like the British detective agency?” 

“As far as we know, she’s not related,” Arianna replied. “Her family doesn’t know much about their history.” 

“That does bring me to my next question, though. I expected you to sound Italian because of your family, or without an accent, but you seem to have a British accent. Did you go to primary school in the United Kingdom?” 

“Yes, actually. My mother is from Cambridge, and I lived with her until I was eight.” 

“Your father being overprotective again?” 

“Actually, that was my mother’s idea,” she responded. “She wanted me to experience a life away from my father’s business before returning here.” 

“That was a good idea.” The girls ate some of their food before Sunset broke the silence again. “Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Your father wants you to be safe here, right? Why don’t we help with that?” 

“I’m athletic and agile,” Arianna said, “Diane is... well...” They all looked at Diane, who was somehow still distracting Melodia’s associates. Arianna pointed her thumb at Diane. “She can do that.” 

“We also have another friend in our little group, Phillip,” Sunset added. “He’s into a lot of the things Arianna is. And then there’s me. I’m the smart one.” 

Octavia looked at her. “I hope that’s not boastful hubris.” 

“Not at all. I’ve always gotten top marks on all my assignments and tests.” 

Octavia finished her milk box and smiled. “It feels good to have friends so quickly. I’ll have to speak with my father about this, but I’m sure he’ll agree.” 

Sunset smiled. “It was good to meet you, Octavia.” 

“Likewise.” 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

“See you tomorrow, Octavia!” The Rainbooms waved as a limo approached in front of the school at the end of the school day and the associates ushered her inside. Arianna turned to Sunset. “She’s pretty nice. I was expecting her to be a snob.” 

“She’s the daughter of a high-ranking mafioso,” Sunset responded. “Nice or not, her family is an obstacle our gang will have to deal with if we’re going to be the best.” 

“We’re thirteen and barely turning a profit offering protection for little kids’ birthday parties.” Phillip stated. “They’ve got money, muscle, and influence. What are we going to do against a family that’s been responsible for most of the organized crime for the last several decades?” 

“Not much. By all accounts, they could kick our asses,” Sunset said. “But we have the element of surprise on our side. As long as we keep playing the long game and don’t let on that we’re planning to destroy them, we’ll have the upper hand.” 

Sunset turned to face the school and put her hand out to lean on the base of the statue. She felt the cold, lifeless stone on her palm, and was reminded of the last time she touched it that previous April when the portal had been open. She forced herself to not look at the statue again. “Look forward to the school, capos,” she said, using the Italian mafia’s word to describe the captains of groups of the mafia’s soldiers. “This is where the Melodias start to lose their chess pieces. This is where our careers begin.” 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

A few days later, Principal Celeste Welkin was doing paperwork at her desk in her office at the school. A strand of her long blonde hair fell into her face, and she brushed it behind her ear. There was a knock on Principal her door, and she looked up at the clock, noting that it was after school hours. 

“Come in," she said, and two students, Sofia Speranza and Arianna Bolt, came in. “How may I help you?” 

Sofia seemed to hesitate, lagging behind Arianna, then spoke up. “I’m sure you're aware that one of the freshmen this year is Octavia Melodia, of the Melodia crime family?" 

“I am,” Celeste stated. “Her father came to me personally to enroll her. I was nervous when I learned she’d be escorted by some of his soldiers until he can be assured of her safety.” 

“Then you might be glad to know that we already gave him that assurance,” said Sofia. 

Celeste looked at her with a shocked expression. “You did? How on earth did you manage that?” 

“It was as simple as offering to be her friends,” Arianna said. “We also may have convinced her to agree on behalf of her family that the school grounds would be a neutral zone where gang violence will be quickly dispatched with. We also plan on getting the other crime families and street gangs who operate in the area to do the same.” 

“That’s... rather impressive, considering you’ve only been attending this school for a week.” 

“I was top of the class at my last school,” said Sofia. “I’ve learned to work quickly and efficiently in whatever I do.” 

“I’m glad you took the initiative to solve what could have been a difficult decision on my part,” Celeste said. “It’s always good to see young students as ambitious as you.” 

“Thanks for seeing us after hours, Principal Welkin." Sofia and Arianna turned to leave. Arianna passed through the door, and Sofia stood in the doorway for a second before turning to the principal. “You... remind me of my old tutor,” she said with a mix of bitterness and pain. 

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” 

Sofia hesitated before responding. “I don’t know anymore.” She quickly left the office and let the door close behind her.
> 03: L'amicizia Rimane un Ancora Fedele
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next four years marked a period of significant growth for the Rainbooms. Within their first year, they recruited two more capos. The first new recruit was Jacqeline Appleton, nicknamed Applejack, a farm girl from the suburbs whose family owned a farm. With her many years of working on the family far, she was easily the strongest one, giving Arianna and Phillip a worthwhile challenge when it came to physical tasks. She was also level-headed, keeping calm in almost every situation. The other was Rachel Marie Johnson, a beautiful young lady with a penchant for all things fabulous, and as such went by the moniker Rarity as an homage to her favorite gemstone, diamonds. She used her charm and beauty to lure straight men, lesbian women, and bisexual men and women to do what she wanted, and she was good at it. They also began recruiting other schoolmates, including two boys from the attached middle school, a tall skinny boy who went by the name Snips and a short stocky boy who went by Snails. They weren’t very smart, but enjoyed being told to cause some mischief. They were perfect lackeys. 

The summer between sophomore and junior years, Sunset tipped them off to a shipment of weapons that were supposed to be delivered to the Melodia family. The Rainbooms jumped on the opportunity to get a leg up on the Melodias, and went to work planning and preparing. Jacqueline, Arianna, and Phillip got part-time jobs at the docks the shipment was supposed to arrive at, and thanks in part to Rachel’s persuasion skills for convincing the employer to run the paperwork quicker than usual. 

When the weapon shipment arrived, the three capos began loading the crates onto a semi truck driven by Sunset and Diane, who had intercepted the actual driver mid-route and forced him out before removing the GPS tracker. They kept it in the cab and followed the intended route until they approached a fork in the road by the bay. Sunset drove the semi off the road and down the embankment to make it look like the truck got run off the road. Diane threw the GPS tracker into the water, and they reversed back onto the road and took the fork toward their base of operations. Arianna, Jacqueline, and Phillip remained at their part-time jobs a few weeks longer so that if the stolen truck was discovered, it would appear like they weren’t connected with its theft. 

It was their most successful job. The Rainbooms laid low and didn’t start carrying the weapons until after the Melodias had investigated, and until it seemed that they’d written off the shipment as lost. When they opened the crates they found that they were the new owners of new automatic rifles, pistols, sniper rifles, ammunition, and many other types of weapons. With their new arsenal, they were able to begin converting a vacant warehouse they controlled into a full-time armory, as well as lure in some more associates. 

As time went on, the Rainbooms kept growing. By the time Sunset and her classmates had graduated, they were over fifty members, and with some of the associates going to colleges in other cities, they began expanding into new territories. Most, however, remained in Canterlot, choosing to keep Canterlot High School safe from gang violence, and on expanding their services to include things like intimidation, extorting money from corrupt government officials, and running scams. They even began dealing in illicit drugs, though they kept those operations at the edges of the cities. 

After graduating from Canterlot High, the Rainbooms set up a permanent base of operations a few blocks away from the school, close enough to keep an eye on the school grounds but far enough away that it wasn’t too easy to find. On the surface, they had set up a music store on the first floor of a mixed purpose building to teach kids and teenagers all kinds of different instruments, but behind the “staff only” door at the back is where the Rainbooms’ bosses and capos had their offices. Sunset and Arianna had the largest offices, as they were the leaders, and other offices were held by Phillip, Rachel, Diane, and Jacqueline. By this time, they had all (except for Sunset) begun going by their nicknames more often than their given names. 

One newer high-ranking member was a very intelligent young woman by the name of Esperanza Noches, codename Twilight. Due to an increase in crime and gang activity near Crystal Prep, her parents had transferred her to the quieter and safer Canterlot High at the end of their junior year. She had a talent for building and programming technology, and was granted an office of her own to convert into a lab where she could tinker with all the gadgets she could think of. 

One day, Arianna knocked on Sunset’s door. Sunset, who was reading an article on her computer, looked up and minimized the window. “Hey Dash. What’s up?” 

“Sofia, I’ve been thinking,” she said. “A lot of it, and I think I need to make a decision that will help our gang in the long run.” Sunset wondered what she could mean by that. Fortunately Arianna was about to continue. “We started this gang together, and we’ve run it together for about a decade. Recently, though, I’ve realized that while it started as my gang, you’ve actually done a shit ton more to lead it than I have.” 

“Don’t be so modest, Dash,” Sunset replied. “You’re a great leader!” 

“I know I am. I’m awesome!” Arianna grinned, then got serious again. “But seriously, I haven’t come up with a good tactical plan in a long time. Every time we send someone on a mission and they’ve come back successful, it’s because you planned it and a bunch of contingencies, or it’s because I’ve learned how to create good plans by copying your methods. So really, you’ve been leading this gang the whole time, and I wanna make it official. I’d like to make you the matriarch of this family, so to speak.” 

Sunset leaned forward and put her elbow on the desk, putting her chin on her hand. This was something she’d been expecting for some time, but had had no desire to speak it into existence herself. Becoming the actual leader instead of the de facto leader was also just one step closer to her goal of destroying the Melodia famiglia. 

“Have you talked with anyone else about this yet?” 

“Only Flash.” 

“What did he think about it?” Sunset asked. 

“He agreed and thought it would be good for us,” Arianna replied. “You and Twilight are the smartest people I’ve ever met, and between the two of you she cares more about her gadgets than about leading a gang. You’re like the best parts of Vito and Michael Corleone.” 

Sunset smiled at the comparison, leaned back in her chair, and started speaking in a thick Italian accent. 

“You come to me, on this, the day of my daughter’s wedding...” 

Arianna burst out laughing, and Sunset switched to a Brooklyn accent. 

“You think I’m funny? Do I amuse you?" 

Sunset kept a straight face for a few seconds, then started laughing herself. “Sorry, I know that’s not The Godfather, but I couldn’t resist. I’ll admit that being the leader is something I’ve thought about a lot the last few years...” No need to tell her that it’s actually been the whole time... “and I’m glad you have this much faith in my abilities.” 

“It’s not so much faith as it is evidence,” Arianna said. “Like when I brag about how awesome I am. Most of the time I can actually cash the checks my mouth writes.” 

Sunset quickly grew into her new role as head of the gang. She continued making plans and running the books, but now with Arianna’s complete trust in her, she could use that to the gang’s advantage as well. The capos in charge of the scouts across the Rainbooms’ territories now sent their reports only to her, and Sunset was able to streamline their operations to make them a little more efficient and more cost-effective. 

One night after the sun went down, Sunset’s phone vibrated. She picked it up and saw a text from capo Tiffany, also known as Trixie, the head of the local scouts. One of her scouts had received information about some possible Melodia activity that night on the other side of the school from where the Rainbooms’ music store was located. According to the intel, a girl named Felicity Esposito had recently been followed by some Melodia goons, though whether or not they were following her based on order from the Melodias was unknown. 

Sunset put her phone down and leaned back in her chair. The young woman’s name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it. Leaning forward, she typed the name into her computer, and after a few minutes of searching, she found what she was looking for: Felicity and Arianna had some history together. 

When they were kids, Arianna had told Sunset about a friend that she’d once had but had lost touch with when she moved away after her older brother was murdered by a low-life in a shitty street gang in an alley somewhere around town. Not the upscale, sophisticated kind of street gang the Rainbooms were. 

Sunset picked up her phone and texted Arianna.




Just received a tip. Some Melodia thugs are in our territory.
 

Great, I’ll get some of my soldiers and teach them a lesson 


That won’t do. The thugs have been following an old friend of yours.
Felicity Esposito


No fuckin’ way. What’s she doing in Canterlot? 


Trixie didn’t say. What she did say was that something was going down on the other side of CHS tonight. Are you available to save your old friend?


Duh. Am I getting backup? 


No soldiers. Pick a capo. We want Felicity to be safe, not scared.


Done.

 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

Arianna and Rachel holed up in a vacant apartment near Canterlot High. Rachel was stationed at the fire escape with a good view of several alleys the thugs were likely to come down. Rachel was sitting on the sofa, waiting for Felicity to arrive so she could run down the stairs and save her old friend. 

They had been waiting for some time already. Rachel polished the gems she’d bedazzled onto a sniper rifle between looking down the scope at the alleys. “How many times do we have to tell you that the point of a sniper rifle is not to be seen, and that bedazzling it just makes it fucking useless?” 

“Says the girl with her hair dyed six different colors. The jewels only reflect light if there is light,” Rachel protested, “and we have the lights off and the moon is waning crescent. The only major source of light is the streetlights down below, and they’re pointing at the ground, away from us. Besides, I only use this gun when I’m staking out unintelligent targets.” 

Arianna glared at her. “Did you just call my childhood friend unintelligent?” 

“Of course not, darling,” Rachel said, still looking down the scope, where she saw some movement. After a moment of observing she saw a thin young woman with strawberry blonde hair walking down the street being followed by some big goons dressed in dark clothes. Rachel pointed down the alley. “I was referring to them.” 

Arianna got off the couch and went over to where Rachel was sitting. She picked up the sniper rifle and looked through the scope down the alley. 

“It’s been about fifteen years, but that’s definitely Felicity,” she said. “Her hair always did look more pink than blonde at night.” 

“Dashie, Dashie, Dashie.” Rachel clicked her tongue. “Don’t tell me you had a crush on that girl when you were children?” 

“Not on her, no,” Arianna replied. “It was only after she moved away that I realized I was a lesbian. She was more of a signpost than a crush. They’re getting closer. Imma start heading down. Cover me if you need to, but I can handle two thugs.” 

Arianna gave the sniper rifle back to Rachel and made her way down the stairwell. 

“Oh, and when you come down, don’t call me Dash," Arianna said. “I don’t want Felicity to know I’m part of a rising organized crime syndicate.” 

Rachel clicked her tongue again. “Such big words. Oh, don‘t worry, Arianna,” she continued after Arianna gave her a look of annoyance. “I’ll join you two when you’ve dispatched those ruffians.” 

After a minute of climbing down the stairs Arianna opened the door to the outside and stood by the corner of a nearby building that Felicity and the two brutes were sure to pass to give Rachel a clear shot if she needed to. Not that she actually needed to, that is. Arianna listened for the footsteps, and soon she saw a shadow passing by. She thrust her arm out, grabbing Felicity’s arm, and pulled her behind the building. Felicity was about to scream, but Arianna put her finger to her lips, and Felicity relaxed, seeing the familiar multi-colored hair of her childhood friend. 

As Arianna had expected, she heard the other footsteps speed up and backed up along the building a bit, then ran out and kicked one of the goons in the side, knocking him into the other. The first goon fell to the ground, holding his side. 

“You guys look like you’re lost,” she said. “Melodia territory is in the other direction, but I don’t mind getting my hands dirty if I’m protecting Felicity.” Arianna punched her hand into her palm and grinned, as if expecting a fight. Felicity backed up a bit more. 

“Hey, I know that hair,” the second goon said. “You’re Dash from the Rainbooms. My nephew gets guitar lessons from you.” 

“Short kid, never practices his chords,” Arianna said. “His talents lie in more physical skills, just like mine do. I’m a pretty awesome fighter too. Would you like to see?” 

The first goon got up, still holding his side. “Don’t do it, man. She’s got one hell of a kick, and I don’t want to see what else she’s got. Let’s get outta here.” The two men turned around and went back toward Melodia territory. 

“I’d better not see you guys around here again unless you want to buy an instrument!” Arianna called after them. The first thug flipped her off as they left. “Rude.” She turned around to face Felicity. “You okay?” 

Felicity hurried over and wrapped her arms tightly around her old friend. “Oh, thank goodness!” she exclaimed. “I was so afraid, Arie!” 

Arianna chuckled and returned the hug. “I’ve missed you too, Felicity.” 

Felicity pulled away. “Oh, um, sorry. Personal space.” 

“No worries, Lis. If anything, we’ve got fifteen years of it to catch up on. But we can do that later. Are you all right? Did they hurt you at all?” 

Felicity shook her head. “No, they just kept following me. I didn’t know what to do or where to go, so I just stayed in the streetlights.” 

“It’s a good thing you did.” 

“How did you know I’d be here?” 

“My friends and I got a tip that some lowlifes had been following and harassing someone, and that they’d be in the area tonight.” 

“What friends?” 

“Just some friends I made in high school,” Arianna said. “One of ‘em’s actually here with me. She was my backup, not that I needed it,” she boasted. 

“You really must learn humility sometime, Arianna,” said a voice across the alley. “It’s rather unbecoming of a lady.” 

“I ain’t no lady!” 

“Clearly.” Rachel stepped forward and held out her hand with a smile. “Good evening. I’m Rachel. It’s nice to meet you, Felicity.” 

Felicity shook her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you too.” 

“We should probably get somewhere safe,” Arianna said, bringing a stop to the pleasantries. “It’s late and I don’t trust those bastards to stay away for very long.” Felicity gave a quiet gasp. “Oh, sorry, Felicity. Bad habit I picked up in middle school.” 

“It’s okay,” she responded. “I might just have to get used to hearing that in this town. I’ve been hearing some people say such awful things.” 

“Come on. Let’s go to the music store. You’ll be safe there.” 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

Sunset stood in the main room of the music store. She’d gotten a text from Arianna a few minutes earlier and decided it would be a good idea to greet their guest while her associates prepared a room for Felicity to sleep in that night, if she chose to. 

It wasn’t long before she saw Arianna’s distinctive multi-colored hair a few blocks away. Sunset opened the shop door and ushered them inside. 

“Looks like it went well." 

“Yup. Felicity, meet Sofia. We’ve known each other for over a decade, and we started this music store together after we graduated.” 

Sunset smiled and held out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Felicity. After what we heard could’ve happened to you tonight, we want to make sure you’re safe. We’ve set up a room you can sleep in tonight, and I’ll stay here as well in case you need anything.” 

“Oh, thank you,” Felicity said. “I’m sorry for all the trouble tonight. Can Arie stay here as well? I mean, I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that I’ve known her longer than anyone else in this city.” 

“That shouldn’t be a problem, should it, Arianna?” Sunset asked, looking at her friend. It was unusual for her to not be going by her nickname, but given the circumstances it made sense. 

“Not at all,” she responded with a smile. “I’m glad I can start spending time with my oldest friend again.” 

“Great, then you can show her upstairs,” Sunset said, and led the group through the staff door to the back offices, and gestured to the nearby stairway as she held the door open. Arianna began chatting with Felicity as they climbed the stairs, and Rachel and Sunset went into Sunset’s office, leaving the door open where sunset could see the stairway from her desk. Sunset opened the mini-fridge under her desk and took out two glass beer bottles, giving one to Rachel as they both sat down. 

“How did it go, Rarity?” 

“Perfectly,” Rachel replied. “We waited longer than expected, but the two ruffians were following Felicity as expected. Dash pulled her into an alley and then kicked one of them into the other. It’s a shame, however.” Rachel let out an overdramatic sigh and touched the back of her hand to her forehead, and began to whine melodramatically. “I had to leave my favorite gun in that old hotel!” 

“Which is your favorite, the bedazzled sniper rifle or the leopard print semi-automatic?” 

“The bedazzled one, of course. It is gorgeous! My semi-automatic rifle is my leopard print weapon, not my sniper rifle, but when you want fabulous, darling, you can’t get much better than a leopard print semi-automatic.” 

“Cheers to that,” Sunset said sarcastically and raised her bottle. Seeing Arianna come back down the stairs, she took another beer from the fridge and set it on her desk. 

“Sounds like it went well,” Sunset said as Arianna entered and took the beer. She leaned back in another chair. 

“Yup. I’m glad you caught on quickly that I didn’t wanna use my nickname.” 

“I wouldn’t have survived this long if I wasn’t that clever,” she replied. “Would you like to explain why?” 

Arianna took a swig of her beer before answering. “Felicity’s always been very timid. She always stuck by me in grade school, and would often ask me not to get into fights. Since we ended up starting a street gang that developed into a fully organized crime syndicate, I thought she might feel betrayed if she found what had happened to me so soon after reuniting with me.” 

“I’m definitely rubbing off on you.” Sunset took another sip from her bottle. “Do you think she’ll want to meet the rest of the Rainbooms?” 

“Maybe not everyone, but for sure she’ll want to meet my closest friends.” 

“All right. We’ll let Pinkie, Twilight, Flash, Applejack, and a few others know that for a few days we should use our real names. If Felicity has a safe place to stay, she may be gone by then, but if not, we may have to ease her into a teensy bit of the cosa nostra. At the very least, teach her to defend herself.” 

“That sounds like a good idea,” said Rachel. 

“I’m gonna go back upstairs,” said Arianna, standing up again. “I told Felicity I’d be in the room next to hers all night if she needed me, and I shouldn’t stay away too long.” 

Rachel and Sunset wished her a good night, and not long after Arianna left Sunset’s office, Rachel left as well, leaving Sunset alone at her desk with only her thoughts. 

I was afraid, with all the time I've spent here doing more and more criminal things, that I’d lost all of my Equestrian heritage, and yet here I am, offering my resources to help a complete stranger. Sunset felt a warmth grow in her chest, but she told herself it was just the beer. At the very least, I hope I don’t grow soft. I’ve got a reputation to uphold and a goal to obtain first.
> 04: I Geni S'incontrano
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunset sat at a table on the outdoor patio of a café, wearing her usual semi-formal outfit of black slacks, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a black vest with teal lining. Sitting in the chair beside her was Phillip. Sunset had taken a liking to Phillip in the last few years, and not just because he was the Rainbooms’ top male enforcer. Arianna, of course, was the gang’s top female enforcer, and she wouldn’t let him outperform her, and so they’d come to an agreement that they’d share the honor, though of course that didn’t stop them from competing. 

“How late do you think she’ll be this time?” Phillip asked. “I think she’ll be twenty minutes late.” 

Sunset thought for a moment, drumming her fingertips on the table. “Twelve minutes, tops. Italians may have a tendency to be late for appointments, but Octavia’s a punctual girl... for an Italian.” She took a sip from a glass of water. “She gets it from her English mother.” 

“I keep forgetting her mother is British.” 

“Still want to bet on twenty minutes?” 

“No, I’ll move my guess up to thirteen,” he said. “It’s bad manners to undermine you, but at least I can give you a challenge.” 

Sunset smiled and offered her hand. “Twenty bucks. Deal?” Phillip took her hand in his and shook it. “Money to be exchanged after the meeting when we’re back at home. Wouldn’t want to offend her in person, after all.” 

Eleven minutes later, Sunset and Phillip noticed a familiar black Cadillac drive around the corner and made its way toward the café. 

“Looks like you win again, Sofia." 

Both Sunset and Phillip stood up as the Cadillac came to a stop. One of the Melodia’s enforcers stepped out and opened the back door. A black stiletto stepped out onto the pavement, followed by another. Octavia wore a sleek black dress and black nylons, with a wide lavender belt. She walked toward Sunset and Flash, followed by her enforcer. Sunset and Octavia shook hands, and then kissed cheeks before all four of them sat down. Phillip hailed a server, who set two more glasses of water down for Octavia and her enforcer. 

“Signora Octavia, it’s great to see you as always,” Sunset said. 

“Likewise, Signora Sofia. How have you been?” 

“I’m doing very well, as usual. Good health, good friends. How are you and your family?” 

“I and my family are well. Healthy, wealthy, wise,” she responded, giving her customary response. “And no exaggeration.” 

“I believe you,” Sunset said. “In all the years we’ve been friends and meeting weekly, I’ve never known you to be a liar. It’s one of your best qualities.” 

A waiter arrived and took their orders. Octavia and Sunset continued making small talk until their food arrived. 

“On to business matters, then?” Octavia asked. 

“Yes. Shall we start with new business this time?” Sunset asked. “There have been some recent... developments with my own affairs that I feel it best you knew about.” 

“That does not sound very good,” Octavia said. “What happened?” 

“Two nights ago, I received word of some Melodia associates in my area, following a young woman. We have an agreement not to be involved in each others’ territories, so I have to assume that they were working independently.” 

Octavia frowned. “That’s no good. I shall have to speak to the offenders. Do you know who they were?” 

“Arianna got the best look at them when she made a flying kick into one of their sides, knocking him into the other.” 

“Then the investigation shall begin with our doctors to see if anyone needed his services recently.” 

“As always, the Rainbooms offer their complete cooperation with the Melodias.” 

“For which I am forever grateful, signora.” Octavia took a bite of her sandwich and chewed it. “Do you know who the young woman they were following was?” 

“As it so happens, we do,” Sunset replied. “She was a childhood friend of Arianna’s who had recently returned to Canterlot after about fifteen years away. Her parents decided to leave after her older brother was murdered by a street gang. We have not yet learned why she returned. She’s rather shy and so far has pretty much only spoken to Arianna and stayed in a room about the music store that we provided for her safety.” 

“You’ve always been kind, Sofia,” Octavia said. “Even with your reputation, your kindness finds a way through that harsh façade.” 

Don’t remind me, Sunset thought through a fake smile. 

“It’s one of my favorite qualities about you,” Octavia continued. “Never lose that. Kindness is out of place in this world, but that is exactly why it cannot be destroyed. Sugared almonds?” she asked, offering a tin. 

Sunset thanked her and took some. 

“I hope my own associates in our other territories have been acting appropriately.” 

“Don’t they send you reports?" 

“They do, but it’s wise to cover all the bases. Fully trusting anyone in this world is a bad mistake leading to a waiting disaster.” 

Octavia nodded. “Wise words. Our associates continue to send regular reports, and from what they tell us your associates are continuing to honor our original agreement. I must say,” she continued, “it occurs to me. In all I know of my father’s business dealings with the other crime families in this city, yours has been the most enjoyable for him to deal with.” 

“Your father honors us with the compliment,” Sunset said. “I suppose that’s why he trusts you to deal with us.” 

“That, and you were my first friends. Trusting me with your gang is evidence of his trust in you, as well as his trust in me.” 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

Sunset and Phillip walked through the front door of the music store. Midweek afternoons were a popular time for college students, and Arianna was helping a customer with guitars and Rachel was helping a customer with a piano. 

“Excuse me a moment,” Arianna said, turning away from her customer to Sunset as she passed. “Sofia, Felicity was asking about our operations. I can talk more when I’ve finished helping this gentleman. Just thought you should know.” 

“Thank you, Arianna,” Sunset replied, then looked at the guitars she had been showing the customer. She smiled. “Good choice. These are some of our finest inventory.” Sunset and Phillip walked to the back of the store and through the staff door. Sunset went into her office, and Phillip followed her. 

“Close the door,” she told him when he noticed him still following her. He nodded and did so, and once he had he turned around to see Sunset standing very close to him. He smiled and wrapped his arms around her waist. 

“What’s on your mind, Phil?” she asked, using her own nickname for when they were alone together. “There’s always something going on in there.” 

“You heard what Dash said,” he replied. “What are we going to do about Felicity?” 

Sunset rested her cheek against his chest, hearing his heartbeat as she thought. The rhythm helped keep her train of thought running smoothly sometimes, and this was no exception. 

They could always kill her, but that was no good. Felicity was Arianna’s oldest friend, and offing her would offend her most useful capo. She couldn’t be killed. Nor could she be abducted, sent away, or coerced into drug-related dependency. Arianna would hate all those options. No, the only things she could do would have to be to help Felicity. 

“According to Arianna, Felicity said that when the thugs were following her, the only thing she could think to do was walk in the streetlights. We’ll teach her how to defend herself.” 

“And if she finds out what we really do here?” 

“Then we’ll tell her the truth, if she asks: we provide protection and security through various means. I see no reason to lie.” She turned around, placing her arms on his around her. “Maybe neglect to mention certain aspects of our business, of course.” 

“Arianna may be here soon.” 

“Yeah, I know.” She removed his arms from her body and walked around her desk. “Open the door and take a seat.” 

It wasn't long before Arianna knocked on the open door and entered. 

“What are we going to do about Felicity?” she asked. 

“She wants to know about what we do, so we’ll tell her,” Sunset replied. “We sell and rent instruments to those wanting to learn, and we supplement our income by providing protection. She said she didn’t know how to defend herself a couple nights ago, so we’re going to teach her.” 

“That’s... pretty smart.” 

“I know. Hopefully she doesn’t ask about our more illicit operations until later. I still need to figure out how to justify those to her without making her afraid of us. Dash, could you go see if she can come down?” 

“Of course.” 

Arianna left the office and went up the stairs to get Felicity, and Sunset gestured for Phillip to stand beside her. They soon saw Arianna descending the stairs with Felicity behind her, almost hiding behind her. When they got to the door Arianna encouraged her friend to step forward. 

“Don’t worry, Lis, it’s fine. You can trust these guys.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry, Sofia,” Felicity said, stepping forward. “I don’t mean to look like I’m ungrateful for helping me. It’s just that I know almost nothing about you, and when you leave your office it’s almost always because you’re leaving to go somewhere.” 

“No offense taken, Felicity. I’m a known workaholic,” Sunset replied. “Can we get you something to drink? Water, juice, coffee?” 

“I’ll just have some water, please, if it’s not too much trouble." 

“No trouble at all.” Sunset gestured to Phillip, who left the office to get Felicity a bottle of water. Felicity thanked him as he passed. “I’ve been told you’ve been asking about what we do. It’s only natural; after all, you’re our guest and you know very little about us. 

“Our primary job is selling and renting instruments to musicians, but that’s not all we do. I’m sure you’ve already seen some of the back area where many of our employees work. Aside from the music, our other primary job is helping those who need help, which can include funding and self-defense training.” 

Phillip returned with a bottle of water and gave it to Felicity, who thanked him again. 

“We figured since you didn’t know how to defend yourself the other night,” Arianna said, “we could teach you!” 

“You would do that for me?” 

“Of course, Felicity,” Sunset said with a smile. “First you’ll have to meet up with Esperanza Noches down the hall. She’s the technical genius here and provides most of the protective measures we offer. Arianna, would you mind showing her around?” 

“Not a problem, Sofia.” 

“As you are a friend of Arianna’s, I’d like to believe that we’re friends as well,” Sunset said. 

Felicity smiled. “Thank you, Sofia,” she said. “You’re too kind.” 

Sunset waited until Arianna and Felicity had left her office before letting her smile turn into a scowl, and she crossed her arms. “Why does everyone keep saying that I’m kind?” 

“Probably because you are,” Phillip said. “You present yourself with a façade of uncaring toughness, but deep down you’re actually pretty kind. And generous, too. Not many Dons and Donnas offer their families’ full resources to someone they just met a few days earlier.” 

“I am tough,” Sunset responded. “I have to be – we all have to be – just to be able to survive in this cruel world. Just... don’t remind me of my kindness or generosity.” 

“You’re also uncharacteristically honest for a Donna.” 

“Don’t remind me of that, either.” 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

Dash led Felicity a few doors down the hallway to Twilight’s lab and knocked on the door. 

“Just a minute!” a voice from inside called. 

“Compared to other groups like ours, we have a leg up,” Dash said as they waited. “Whatever tools and weapons we obtain, she makes them better, as well as provides us with drones and robots to help us with what we need to do.” 

“Weapons?” 

“Oh. Right.” Dash scratched her head. “When your business involves protecting people, sometimes you have to use weapons to keep them safe from as– from jerks. I’ll try not to swear around you, but I can’t promise everyone else will do the same.” 

“It’s... fine. I guess I’ll just have to deal with it.” 

Just then the door opened, revealing a young woman with black-framed glasses and a lab coat. Her purple-dyed hair was done up in a bun, and there were a lot of loose strands. She adjusted her glasses. 

“How can I help you, Dash? Oh,” she said, noticing Felicity. “We have a guest?” 

“Have you even left your lab the last few days?” Arianna asked. Esperanza shook her head. “This is Felicity, my oldest friend. We helped her out a couple nights ago and brought her here to make sure she’d be safe. We’re gonna teach her some self-defense, and Sofia wanted her to meet some of the crew.” 

Esperanza looked between the two of them for a moment, then offered her hand to Felicity. “Good morning –” 

“Nope,” Dash said. 

“Evening?” 

“0 for 2.” 

“Good afternoon. I’m Esperanza. I make upgrades and build robots and other gadgets to help us do what we need to do.” 

“Can I go inside the lab?” 

Twilight looked to Dash, who shrugged. “Why do you want to come in? Just curious.” 

“I get nervous around people I haven’t met,” she replied. “I like to sit alone in the woods. It’s quiet, but it isn’t. Birds chirping, critters calling each other. It’s noisy, but in the ways that calm me. You feel that way about technology and robots, don’t you?” 

“Well, yes. That’s a rather apt analogy. Come on in." 

Twilight stepped aside and welcomed them into her laboratory. Dash stopped her at the door while Felicity walked around, looking at some of Twilight’s handiwork. 

“Twilight, that was odd for Felicity,” Dash said. “She’s never talked that much to someone she’s never met before.” 

“How long has it been since you last saw her?” Twilight asked. “Before a couple nights ago, that is.” 

“About fifteen years," Dash answered. “Why?” 

“Things can change in that much time,” Twilight replied. “I’m not the same person I was fifteen years ago. Can you honestly say that you were?” 

“Duh. I’ve been awesome my whole life!” 

“Arianna, come on.” 

Dash let out a groan. “Okay, fine. I’ll admit I’m not exactly the same person I was fifteen years ago.” 

Twilight nodded. “Even if nothing changed in fifteen years, Felicity was right about. She finds comfort in nature and animals, I find it in technology and books. We’re both introverts, kindred spirits. We have a tendency to not talk much most of the time, but if two introverts discover they have something in common, we become fast friends. It’s rare for us to feel connections the way extraverted people like you do.” 

“Huh. Never thought about it like that.” 

“Esperanza, what does this robot do?” 

Twilight and Dash looked over. Felicity was standing next to a tall robot. One arm ended in a whisk, and the other was a nozzle. 

“Careful around that one!” Twilight said, nearly panicking. “That’s a robot I’m building to help Diane and Jacqueline with baking and I need to fix the programming!”

Twilight hurried over, and Dash started laughing.
> 05: Quando Ti Godi la Prosperità, Diffida Delle Avversità
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Arianna knocked on Felicity’s door. “Lis, it’s Arie. You ready to go yet?”

Several days had passed since Felicity’s rescue, and as they had discussed, Arianna was about to escort Felicity to a nearby gym so she could start training in self-defense. After a moment Felicity opened the door.

“I’m not sure what I can bring,” Felicity said. “I didn’t have much with me when I moved back here, and you guys already brought it over when I started living here.”

“We’ll have to buy you some exercise clothes then,” Arianna said. “I always pack spare workout clothes when I go to the gym, so you can use those today.”

Felicity thanked her and they started their journey down the streets to the gym. Though it was still light out, Felicity stayed close to Arianna. They were passing the area where Felicity had been rescued.

“Be cool, Lis,” Arianna said, wrapping her arm around Felicity’s shoulders. “You’re gonna be okay. I’ll protect you if something happens again.”

They kept walking in silence until they arrived at the gym. Arianna walked up to the desk and showed the red-headed attendant her membership card.

“Welcome back, Arianna.”

“Hello, Gloria. I’ve got a guest with me today.” Felicity peeked out from behind Arianna and gave a little wave. “Felicity’s going to be joining me for a while. I’m gonna be teaching her some self-defense.”

“Fantastic!” Gloria said. “We do have classes on Thursdays–”

Arianna held up a hand and Gloria stopped talking. “I’m gonna stop you there. Felicity gets nervous around others, but thanks for the offer. I may take you up on those so I can teach her later. We’re just gonna use a padded room today.”

Gloria nodded and gave Arianna an access pass to one of the smaller rooms. Arianna led Felicity to the room, and they dropped their bags by the door. They spent a few minutes stretching.

“All right, let’s start with seeing what you know. Say I’ve cornered you in an alley and I’m about to attack you from the front. What would you do?”

“I can’t run away?”

“No running away. You’re cornered.”

“Um, a kick to the knee? So they can’t run after me when I run away.”

“That’s not bad, but you’ve got to be pretty accurate and strong in order to do enough damage to the kneecap, so it’s not ideal for a beginner. An easier defense is a kick to the crotch, especially if your attacker is a dude. It still hurts on a chick since you’re kicking bone, but when guys get kicked in the balls, they’re unable to do much else for a few minutes.” Arianna held her hand over her groin, palm facing down and invited Felicity to kick.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Felicity said.

“I’ll be fine,” Arianna reassured her. “I’ve gotten way worse injuries before, and you’ll be kicking my hand before you get to the bone.” Felicity hesitated for a moment, and then swung her leg up between Arianna’s legs, barely reaching Arianna’s hand. “Good try. Now work your way up, kicking harder.” Felicity nodded and kicked a few more times, each time hitting Arianna’s hand harder until she kicked so hard Arianna had to pull her hand back and rub her wrist.

“Oh no. Did I hurt you?”

“That’s not important,” Arianna replied with a smile. “What is important is that I didn’t expect you to be able to kick that hard! You must’ve gone on tons of nature walks the last fifteen years.”

“Oh, yes,” Felicity said with a smile. “Tons.”

They continued training for the rest of the hour Arianna had booked the room. Arianna taught Felicity a heel palm strike for attacking an assailant’s nose or throat with a flat palm, how to strike with her elbows, and most importantly how to get out of being held from behind. After the training session, Arianna and Felicity walked from the gym floor to the locker room. It wasn’t too late so there were still plenty of people at the gym. Arianna led Felicity to the locker room showers, and Felicity stayed at the door.

“We’re going to shower in public?” Felicity asked.

“Yes, but they’re still private stalls. Each stall has walls and a curtain for privacy.”

“What if someone comes in anyway?”

“Nobody does that. It’ll be fine.”

“Can the curtain be secured closed?”

“Um, they’re curtains. They’re not meant to be locked.” Felicity still looked nervous. “How about this: you use this shower,” Arianna said, pointing to one shower stall before pointing to the stall directly across from it, “and I’ll be in this one. I’ll keep my curtain open so that if anyone comes in with bad intentions, they’re more likely to attack me since I’m more readily accessible, and I’ll just kick their ass if they do. It’s okay, Lis,” she said, taking Felicity’s hand. “I’ll protect you no matter what.”

Felicity nodded and stepped into the shower stall. Arianna closed the curtain behind her and stepped into her own shower stall, keeping her curtain open as promised. They undressed, set their clothes aside, and began showering. Arianna kept an eye on Felicity’s shower stall, and Felicity started singing. Arianna paused for a moment, listening to her beautiful singing for a minute. She finished up quickly and started drying herself off, and then waited for Felicity to finish. The singing stopped abruptly, and a second later Felicity opened the shower curtain.

“In the future we’ll come when there are fewer people here, like in the evenings,” Arianna said. “Would you like that?” Felicity nodded. “All right, we’ll do that then. Good thing this is a 24-hour gym.”


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Diane “Pinkie” Pinkerton drove her car down a side street to an unlit and unkempt city park and parked it next to a lone street lamp. The light shone on the hood of the car but left the cab and trunk in darkness. Her fingers drummed on the steering wheel. She looked at a nearby warehouse. A new client had agreed to meet with one of the Rainbooms to buy some illicit drugs. Diane looked at the clock on her phone. She realized she was early, so she took a joint from her pocket and lit it. She waved it around a bit to get the smoke flowing and closed her eyes as she breathed it in. She didn’t need a lot, just enough to calm her hyperactivity.

Pinkie had tried many suggested methods to calm her naturally high energy level such as meditation, exercise, and eating healthy, but most of them took longer to start working than her attention span could handle. As for eating healthy, Pinkie had no desire to give up her love of baked goods and candy. Inhaling some smoke was often enough to tone her down enough for meetings liked the one she was about to attend.

She let the joint smolder a little longer as she watched the warehouse. Soon, a car drove up and parked in front of the warehouse. A man got out of the car, pulled a suitcase from it, and walked into the warehouse. Pinkie extinguished the joint, put it in the car’s ashtray, and opened the trunk. She got out and took a briefcase from the trunk before making her way to the warehouse.

A short walk later Pinkie reached her waiting client by what used to be the warehouse’s offices.

“Good evening,” she said, and the client jumped back.

“Sorry,” he said. “You kinda snuck up on me.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot.” Pinkie smiled, and kept smiling.

The guy pointed at Pinkie’s briefcase. “Is that the shit?”

“Yeah, this is the shit.”

The client, nervous, rubbed his hands together. “How do we do this? I’ve never bought drugs before.”

“We swap the shit for the money,” she answered, still smiling.

“Uh, yeah. I get that. I’ve seen a few movies. Who goes first, do you show me the drugs or do I show you the money?”

Pinkie shrugged. “Depends. Sometimes drugs first, sometimes money. Sometimes the buyer wants to test the product before buying to make sure it’s as good as they expect.”

They continued talking and, eventually, finally made the deal. Pinkie handed over the drugs and the client handed over the money at the same time.

“Pleasure doing business, sir!” Pinkie said, and turned away.

And then she thought she heard something behind her. She cocked her head and turned around.

“What did you just call me?” Pinkie’s normally cheery demeanor was almost immediately chilled. The buyer paused in his steps for a moment, but then started walking again, a little faster.

“Hey, I’m talking to you!” Pinkie dropped the briefcase of money and took a switchblade out of her pocket, clicking it open. The sound of the switchblade opening must have convinced him, and he turned around. He saw a fire in her eyes. “What. Did you call me.”

He stammered, and after a moment spoke. “I… I, I called you dumb.”

“There was one other word,” she said, pointing the knife at him and walking closer. He started backing up. “Say it!”

“Dumb bitch, I called you a dumb bitch!”

“That’s what I thought you said.”

Pinkie stood over a bloody, mutilated body, covered in her client’s blood and breathing heavily. Her fingers loosened and dropped the knife onto the floor. She lifted her head, eyes glistening and her mouth quivered as the tears started to fall down her cheeks. She looked around the room, seeing the briefcase she’d entered with laying open on the floor. One of the packages had opened, and she stared at it.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Sunset drove her car toward the business district at the edge of town. She’d gotten a text from Diane not long ago asking for help, but with no details. She worried every time she got a text like that from Diane, because she knew it was never good.

Sunset pulled up to the warehouse and made her way inside. Soon she held her hand up to her mouth, seeing the scene. Diane was kneeling by a bloody, mutilated body. She hurried to her friend. “Fucking hell, Pinkie. What the hell happened?”

Pinkie looked up at Sunset, her eyes red. Beside her was an open bag of drugs she was to have sold that night, and though Sunset couldn’t tell for sure she had a strong suspicion that Diane had taken some.

“I – I don’t know,” she said. “We did the thing, he called me a dumb bitch, and then I was standing over his body holding my knife.”

Sunset’s head ran with different thoughts. She wished Phillip was here so she could collect her thoughts the way she preferred, but he wasn’t, so instead she focused on her own heartbeat to collect her thoughts.

“Okay, Pinkie,” she said, gently touching Diane’s shoulder. “Try to stand up. Let’s go over here.”

Diane slowly stood up, her body shaking, and Sunset led her away from the body.

“Will he be okay?” she asked.

Sunset wasn’t sure if telling the truth about the obviously dead body behind them would help her feel better or not. Most likely not, since Diane might be under the influence of the drugs they were trafficking.

“He might pull through,” she lied. “Okay, lay down here. I’ll call the doctor.” Diane laid down and Sunset pulled out her phone, scrolling through her contacts until she got to the number for gang’s doctor. She told him the location of the warehouse and that Diane might be under the influence of drugs. She hung up and then called the gang’s cleaners, giving them the same directions. She put the phone back in her pocket after ending the call and sat next to Diane, waiting for the doctor to arrive.

Sunset used the next few minutes to think, then spoke up softly. “Pinkie, you need help.”

Diane said nothing. Soon the doctor arrived, followed by the cleaners. The doctor took his time looking Diane over as the cleaners began their work, cleaning up all the blood and viscera. Sunset watched as one cleaner picked up the briefcases and carried them out to their vehicle.

“She’ll be all right,” the doctor said, bringing Sunset’s attention back to him. “She has no wounds and should recover quickly.”

“Any other injuries?” she asked, tapping a finger to her head.

“We’ll have to do a more in-depth investigation back at headquarters,” he replied, giving her a nod.

“What about the other guy?” Diane asked.

“Doc’s checking him next,” Sunset responded and gave the doctor the go-ahead. He stood up and brought his bag over to the body as Sunset helped Diane up. “Do you still have the keys to your car?” Diane pointed to one of her pockets. Sunset reached in and took out the keys to the car Diane had driven. She got the attention of one of the cleaners and tossed him the keys and told him where the car was, and led Diane to her own vehicle.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Arianna and Felicity walked from the gym floor to the locker room after Felicity’s training session. It was late so there were very few others in the building, but even after over a week of coming to the gym, Felicity was still nervous about showering in public. Arianna continued to shower in the stall next to Felicity’s with the curtain open so she could jump out and protect her friend in the very, very slight chance that something was going to happen, which it never did. Arianna always showered faster than Felicity, and would stand waiting for her until she was finally done.

They made their way to the lockers, and Arianna looked at a nearby mirror, looking closer at her blonde roots.

“I think I’m gonna have to redye my hair soon,” she said.

“Why don’t you let it grow out?” Felicity asked. “The rainbow colors look nice, but you also look lovely with your natural blonde hair.”

“Thanks, Lis. I’ll redye my hair, but I’ll think about letting more blonde show through. See if I like it before making a final decision. By the way,” she said, “you’re a quick learner. You learned those techniques quickly tonight. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that you’ve already got some experience,” Arianna laughed.

“Thanks, Arie,” Felicity responded, facing away and fixing her hair. “I have a good teacher.”

“Not just a good teacher, an awesome one!”

The two young women finished drying off their hair and bodies and got dressed before packing up their things and leaving the gym.

“Wow, it’s already dark out,” Felicity said nervously and walked closer to Arianna.

“Yeah, we must’ve been in there longer than we thought.” They walked in silence for a minute before Arianna stopped and turned to Felicity. “Lis, something’s been bugging me since you came back.”

“Oh?” she asked. “What is it?”

“When your parents took you away, I thought you were gonna be gone forever. What brought you back?”

Felicity stood beside her friend, quiet for a moment. “My parents are… busy,” she began. “I started at a local college after I graduated high school, but with all the extra free time I had my mind wandered, and I started thinking about you again. I wondered how you’d been getting along, and eventually my desire to know overpowered my fear of this city. And the fear of not knowing.”

“No way,” Arianna said. “You came back because of me, and then I saved your life. What are the odds of that?”

“Somehow, I had a feeling we’d find each other eventually.”

“Just like we did in grade school,” Arianna said, and they started walking again. It wasn’t long before Arianna snapped her fingers. “That’s why those two would-be muggers who were following you looked familiar! They were two of the three bullies on the playground.”

“I didn’t notice,” Felicity said, turning her head aside but continuing to walk with Arianna. “I never got a good look at them.”

“Fortunately, next time you meet them you’ll be able to kick their sorry butts.” By this time, Arianna and Felicity had reached the music store. Arianna took out her keys, unlocked the front door, and ushered her friend inside before locking the door again. Felicity started walking to the staff door, which Arianna opened and led her up the stairs to the room she’d been staying in.

“Thank you, Arie,” Felicity said, standing just outside the door.

“Any time, Lis.”

Felicity opened the door to her room, and hesitated. 

“Is something wrong, Felicity?”

“Oh, no, I just…” Felicity turned around and gave Arianna a quick kiss on the cheek before hurrying into the room and shutting the door.

Arianna stood there for a while, and gently touched her cheek where Felicity had kissed her. She looked at her hand as if expecting something to be on it, but then lowered her arm and started walking down the stairs.

“Well, that was… unexpected.” She was about to enter her office when she heard the back door open. Sunset walked in, helping Diane walk as well. Both had blood on them, but Diane had most of it. “Holy shit, what happened?”

“The short version is that the drug deal Pinkie was on went south,” Sunset said. “She needs to stay with our doctor for a while until he can do a full evaluation.” Sunset led Pinkie to the facility’s medical room, which was really more like a glorified nurse’s station, and helped her lay on the cot. “Doc will be here soon. You gonna be okay, Pinkie?”

“I’ll be fine. I’m more worried about the other guy.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine too,” Sunset said and closed the door. Once the door was closed, Sunset beckoned Arianna to follow her into her office, and closed that door too. “He won’t be fine,” she said, making her way to her desk. She sat in her chair and leaned all the way back. “She overheard him call her a dumb bitch under his breath, and she snapped. Basically, she cut him to ribbons.”

“Yeesh. Remind me not to get on her bad side.”

“Dash, now is not the time to try to be funny! This is serious!”

“Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry.” Arianna sat down in front of her boss. Now was definitely not the time to tell Sunset about what had happened on the stairs. “What can we do?”

“Once Doc gives her a fully psychiatric evaluation we’ll know,” Sunset responded. “Until then… part of me want to drink myself to sleep, and another part of me wants to run away from all of this. I’ve seen dead bodies before, but what happened to this guy was awful.”

Arianna stood up and made her way to the other side of the desk, putting her hand on Sunset’s shoulder. “You’re probably in shock right now, Sunset,” she said, using her boss’s real name instead of her alias. “Drink some water, go home and take a shower or something, and get some rest. You’ll be more clear-headed in the morning. I’ll take care of things here until tomorrow.”

Sunset sighed and leaned forward in her chair. “Thanks, Arianna. You’re right. I’m letting my emotions control me instead of reason.”

“Don’t worry,” Arianna said, “I won’t tell anyone else that you have emotions.”

Sunset looked up and gave her friend a soft punch in the arm. “Jerk. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Sunset said, standing up from her chair. “Doc will be here for Diane, anything else...” Sunset thought for a moment. “If Twilight’s still here, send her home too. That woman gets so invested in her work I swear she could work through an apocalypse.”

“Kinda sounds like someone else I know,” Arianna said, pulling Sunset out of her office. Once in the hallway Arianna put her hands on Sunset’s shoulders and smiled. “Sofia, I’ve got this. Wash that guy’s blood off your hands and go home.”

They said good night to each other and Sunset finally left, after a quick detour to the bathroom to get whatever dried blood she could off her hands. Arianna did the same, having touched some blood that had been on Sunset’s clothes at some point, and then crossed the hall to knock on Twilight’s door.

“Just a minute!” called a voice from inside. Arianna rolled her eyes and waited for the door to open. As soon as it opened, Arianna didn’t let Twilight continue with her usual ‘how can I help you’.

“You know it’s almost midnight, right?”

“In this time zone,” Twilight asked, “or are you trying to be funny again?”

“Yes, in this time zone. Sofia wanted to make sure you went home tonight. We all know that you can get so invested your work that you forget to eat and sleep.”

Twilight straightened her glasses and looked at the clock in her lab that was next to the door. She then took out her phone to compare times.

“The battery in the clock must have died two hours and 13 minutes ago,” she said.

“I’ll fix it,” Arianna said, cutting Twilight off before she could volunteer herself. “I’m staying to watch over Pinkie tonight anyway.”

“What happened to Pinkie?”

“Something bad,” Arianna responded. “You and everyone else will get details tomorrow.”

A mouse scurried along the edge of the hallway wall. Twilight shrieked and quickly moved behind Arianna as the mouse found its way through the open door into Twilight’s lab.

“Have a good night, Dash! Please take care of that too!” Twilight said as she hurried down the hall out the facility’s back door, shutting it tightly behind her.

Arianna chuckled. “I should try using a mouse to get Sunset out of here sometime,” she said and entered Twilight’s lab on a mouse hunt.
> 06: La Goccia Che Ha Fatto Traboccare il Vase
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Esperanza adjusted her glasses with a frown. She wasn’t sure how many days it had been since she had first met Felicity, but if she were to ask Sofia or Arianna, they would have told her that it had been a week. The morning after the mouse had found its way into her lab, she returned to find several uncompleted projects on the floor and several others not far from where she’d left them. She went quickly to work fixing everything and soon everything was back where she’d left it, and she began fixing the damaged parts.

Today she was having trouble finding a computer chip she’d removed from the baking robot after Felicity had almost accidentally activated it. She knew she had set it by one of her computers so she could check the code and see what needed to be fixed.

Esperanza opened a cupboard and took out a robotic dog she had built at Crystal Prep before being transferred to Canterlot High School. She wiped some dust off it, flipped the power switch, and set it on the floor. Loading symbols appeared in the robot dog’s eyes, and after a few moments it let out a mechanical bark.

“S.P.I.K.E., I can’t find a computer chip I placed over here a few days ago. It’s similar to the one inside you. Can you scan for it?”

Esperanza’s S.P.I.K.E., – her Symbiotic Partnership In Kanines (Electrical) – let out another mechanical bark and moved its head as it rolled around the room, scanning. Esperanza began tinkering with a gadget on her workbench for another minute or so, when she heard another bark and looked down at Spike.

“It’s not here?” she asked, and S.P.I.K.E. responded with a bark. “That’s strange. There’s no way it could’ve left this room.” She thought for a moment. “Unless the mouse picked it up thinking it was food? Oh no.” Esperanza stood up and hurried out of the lab. S.P.I.K.E. rolled after her, but Esperanza closed the door behind her and Spike bumped into it. He let out another bark and started rolling around the room, scanning and analyzing everything in it.

Esperanza hurried a few doors down and knocked on Arianna’s door. She waited a few moments before knocking again.

“Dash is training Felicity right now,” said Sofia behind her, startling Esperanza. She turned around and readjusted her glasses, which had slipped down her nose. “They’ll be back soon. Anything I can help you with?”

“I’m missing the AI chip for the baking robot,” she replied. “I put it by one of my computers a few days ago, but I can’t find it, and S.P.I.K.E. scanned for it since I based the baking robot’s AI off the AI I used for him, but he couldn’t find it either.”

“S.P.I.K.E.?”

“A robotic dog I built when I went to Crystal Prep. I didn’t bring him out when I went to CHS?”

“Not that I can recall,” Sofia said. “I’m pretty sure I’d remember if you brought a robotic dog to school. So you’re missing a computer chip, and you thought Dash could help.”

“Right. Yes, the computer chip. That’s why I knocked on Arianna’s door. The night that Diane killed that man, Arianna came to make sure I was going to go home to sleep. Just before I left a mouse found its way into my lab and I asked her to take care of it while I, well, I ran home.”

“Musophobia?”

Esperanza nodded. “There’s a possibility that the mouse thought the computer chip was food and took it, and since Arianna was the last to deal with the mouse, she might have seen it.”

Sofia nodded and took out her phone. She sent a text to Arianna before putting her phone away and turning back to Esperanza. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen what you’ve been working on,” she said. “Would you like to show me?”

“Of course,” Esperanza said. They walked down to her lab and opened the door. S.P.I.K.E. came rolling out and gave an electronic bark as he saw his maker. Esperanza picked him up and turned to face Sofia. “First of all, this is S.P.I.K.E., my Symbiotic Partnership In Kanines (Electronic).”

“Wouldn’t that be S.P.I.C.E. then?”

“It would if I spelled ‘canine’ with a C in the acronym,” she said, and S.P.I.K.E. barked again. “The AI program I’m using in the baking robot for Jacquelin and Diane is derived from the program I used for S.P.I.K.E. They both respond to spoken commands and questions and use a series of algorithms to determine which subroutines should be activated.” Esperanza set S.P.I.K.E. down. “Lie down.” S.P.I.K.E. spread all four of his limbs, lowering his body until he was “laying” on the ground. “Good boy. I’ve upgraded him a few times since I built him, but the basic dog training commands have gone unchanged, so they’re rather primitive compared to the newer programming. Scaling up that programming for a giant humanoid baking robot has presented challenges.”

“I can imagine.” Sofia saw a dismantled drone on the back corner of a workbench and approached it. It looked like one of the Rainbooms’ standard surveillance drones, but without several features that came standard on those. “What’s this going to be?”

“This is just a little side-project I’ve been working on,” Esperanza said, picking up the remote-controlled drone. “Using my surveillance drone as a base, I stripped out most of the add-ons and replaced it with a high-definition camera I’ll reprogram to automatically take a picture when it sees its user smiling or posing. It’ll be its own 5G hotspot so the picture can be uploaded no matter where in the world you are. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to include a microphone and video recording device for livestreaming.”

“A selfie drone?” Sofia asked, and Esperanza nodded. “That’s brilliant. Millions of people would find this useful. We could probably earn a lot of money legitimately by patenting this.”

Esperanza put her hand to her chin in thought. “Even if we were to limit production to millennials, there are 76.1 million in the United States. A 2018 survey found that 82% of these individuals had taken selfies and uploaded them to social media. If even only one percent of these were to buy a selfie drone, that’s still about 625,000 people. If we were to sell them for, say, $400 each, assuming 20% profit, that would be…” Esperanza scratched her head as she did the calculation. “Almost $50 million dollars in domestic profit alone.”

Sofia whistled. “That’s a lot of money. Go ahead and keep working on it, and we’ll see if we can get a patent for this.” Esperanza continued showing Sofia around the lab, who had two thoughts in the back of her mind. The first was admiration for Twilight’s calculator-like brain. The second was a rhetorical question: “with the profit we could make off Twilight’s technology, why the hell are we in a gang?”


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Snips and Snails walked up the stairs to their shared apartment carrying a bag of Chinese food. Snails, the taller and skinnier of the two young men, flipped through the keys in his keyring to find the right one.

“Hurry up, Snails,” said Snips, the shorter and more gaunt of the two. “I’m hungry and the food’s gonna get cold!”

“Give me a minute, Snips. Ah, here it is.” He put the key to the lock. It didn’t go in. “No, wait, it’s this one.” This time the key worked, and they entered their apartment and locked the door behind them.

The apartment was a mess. The floor was covered in old pizza boxes and takeout containers, and every horizontal surface was covered in mail, trash, and other miscellaneous things. Despite the clutter, the two young men had kept several walkways, as well as the couch they sat on to watch TV and movies, free of any clutter. Snips sat on the sofa and turned on the TV, setting the bag of food on the table in front of the sofa after moving some stuff to make a flat surface to set it all on. Snails went to the fridge to get a case of beer bottles and brought them over.

“Jackass marathon, here we come!”

As they watched the first Jackass movie, they were so invested in the stupidity on the screen that they were oblivious to everything around them. Someone could have snuck in through the window, or a fire could’ve started a few feet behind them and they wouldn’t have noticed right away.

One movie and an empty case of beer later, Snails stood up to go to the bathroom, stumbled a bit, and soon sat back down, holding his hand against his head. Snips looked at his friend.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I just… I think I drank too much and then stood up too quickly.” He tried standing up again, but curiously felt dizzy again. He leaned against the couch and carefully made his way to the apartment’s bathroom. As he passed the kitchen, he felt an ache growing in his forehead.

“Hey Snips, get the headache medicine,” he called behind him. “I feel a headache coming on, and I don’t want to stop the marathon.”

“You got it, Snails.” Snips stood up and walked to the kitchen cupboard where they kept their prescription and over-the-counter drugs. He took out a bottle of Midol and started feeling a dull ache in his head as well. He set the bottle on the counter and reached up to get another bottle, setting it next to the Midol. He paused for a moment, looking at both bottles, and put the second one away. “It must’ve already been out.”


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Sunset drummed her fingers on her desk. She hadn’t heard from Snips and Snails in a few days, and they were supposed to be at the music store the day before. She’d called them a few times, each time with no answer and with no call back. She had learned to always give them some extra time to respond, but they’d never taken this long to reply before.

“I’ll give them another day or so,” she finally said. She took out her phone to check the time, and saw that she had missed a call from Doc and that he had left a voicemail. She tapped through to the voicemail screen and hit play on the new message.

“Diane seems to be taking to the new medication well. Her vital signs are consistently stable. However, I possibly have some bad news. In monitoring her conditions, it appears that the medication also has the side effect of decreased reaction times and taking longer to come up with ideas. They’re still in the normal range for normal people, but Diane’s normal range is much higher. Her speech is also minorly affected. She pauses frequently while she speaks as if she can’t remember what she was about to say. As usual, I’ll keep an eye on her and update you on any progress.”

Damn it, Sunset thought. “Damn it,” she said, tossing her phone onto her desk and putting her head in her hands. Diane had been the wild card of the Rainbooms, the one you could count on to make the impossible possible and the likely unlikely. Sunset had once said that there was a difference between getting lucky and being lucky, and with the recent developments she wondered if she had been wrong. She’d known that this world was different from Equestria, and assumed that the difference between getting lucky and being lucky would remain the same, but perhaps that was just one more thing different about this world.

Sunset thought about Equestria for the first time in a very long time. She thought about how much better life had been for every pony, even for the most unfortunate ones. At least in Equestria nopony had to fear being brutally murdered with a switchblade just for saying the one thing that made somepony else fly off the handle.

No, the only things ponies had to be afraid of were magical creatures returning from exile. Sunset wondered how Equestria had fared against the return of Nightmare Moon, on whether she had successfully set up her reign of eternal night or if she had been defeated once again by new wielders of the Elements of Harmony. Princess Celestia hadn’t told her much about when she had defeated Nightmare Moon the first time, but she and the history books stated that she used the Elements of Harmony to do so. Princess Celestia had also confided in her former pupil that she was no longer able to wield the Elements, which is one reason she had been training Sunset. And, Sunset now realized, probably also why she had wanted her to make friends, so they could wield the Elements alongside her.

Sunset picked up her phone and got up from her desk. No use dwelling on the past and what might have been. She needed to focus on this world, today.

Sunset stepped out of her office and started walking down the hallway to a conference room in the back of the warehouse. The music store wouldn’t be open for over another hour, after all, and a little walk might do her some good.

The conference room had been designated early on as the war room, where she and her capos would gather to discuss missions and methods of gaining income. The room had a large rectangular table with seven chairs around it, one for her on the end, and three on each side for each of her capos. There was a smartboard on each side of the table where maps and documents could be projected and drawn on, but today they were turned off and unused. Sunset sat down in her chair and leaned back, putting her feet up on the table, and began to think about what she could do in the near future to accommodate her missing associates and her invalid capo.

It was here that Phillip found her, and knocked on the door to get her attention. Sunset looked over at the door and sighed.

“Good morning, Flash.”

“Morning, Boss,” he said. “We don’t have a meeting today. What’s up?”

“I needed to get out of my office for a bit,” she replied. “Did Doc call you about Diane as well?”

Phillip nodded. “So you came here to clear your head and think because you couldn’t find me to listen to my heartbeat.” Sunset looked at him with a bit of surprise and nodded. She didn’t know that he had figured out that that’s often what she did. Phillip pulled a chair over and sat down next to her.

“What are we going to do without her?” he asked.

“Don’t say that. You make it sound like she’s dead.”

“Sorry.”

“But I do get where you’re coming from. We’ve gotten used to relying on her being unpredictable. I’ve gotten used to it. Whenever a plan needed a bit of extra luck, I added her to the crew. I never thought something like what happened a few nights ago to happen. It made me wonder if I was wrong all those years ago about the difference between getting lucky and being lucky.”

“For what it’s worth, Sofia, I think that you were right. Luck is something that’s intangible, theoretical, and unprovable, and yet whenever Pinkie was part of something that thing always seemed to succeed for us.”

The room was silent for a moment. Sunset looked at Phillip, and then at her feet on the table.

“Snips and Snails haven’t checked in. They’re usually late, but this is much later than usual. I was going to give them another day, but I’ve been wondering if I should go over to their apartment now and see what’s going on.”

“No, you shouldn’t.”

“You think I should wait another day?” she asked.

“I think you should spend some time helping customers once the store opens,” he answered. “You’ve had a lot to handle lately, and focusing on something as simple as selling instruments might lower your stress level.”

“What makes you think I’m stressed?”

“Sofia, I’ve known you for over a decade,” he stated, staring into her eyes. “I’ve watched go through all kinds of emotions and stress levels.”

“Your advice for lowering my stress level is to help customers in a retail setting, a scenario which most retail workers hate because it raises their stress levels” she said. “Man, that sounds so messed up.”

Phillip shrugged. “Most retail workers aren’t also the leader of a rising crime family.”

“Good point.”

“I’ll go over to Snips and Snails’s place and see why they haven’t been checking in.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Sunset said. “Maybe if they see my top male enforcer came to get them, it’ll scare them into being on time for once.”

Phillip chuckled, stood up, and moved the chair back to its place. “I’ll keep you updated.”


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


A black Camaro with lightning bolts painted on each side drove up to an apartment building and parked near the front. Flash stepped out and removed a pair of sunglasses, tossing them into the passenger seat before closing the door and locking the car. He walked up to the door and pressed the buzzer for their apartment. He waited a minute, and then pressed it again. After not getting an answer over the intercom, Flash pressed the buzzer for the landlord.

“Steve and Steve, did you lock yourselves out of your apartment again?” the landlord’s voice said, saying the two lackeys’ given names.

“No, sir. My name is Phillip, and I’m actually here to talk to them. They’re not answering the buzzer. We haven’t heard from them in a few days, and we felt it necessary to check in on them.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“The Rainboom music store. They were scheduled to work, but all we’ve gotten was a couple no-call no-shows.”

“I can’t let someone into someone’s apartment without permission from the tenant or a warrant.”

“Perhaps not legally, but we’ve been keeping an eye on you. You have a bit of a record, and you haven’t exactly been completely obeying your parole, now, have you?”

There was a moment of silence. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

Within a minute the apartment building’s door opened and Phillip saw the landlord. “What have you seen?”

“Nothing too bad. Accepting bribes from tenants, sneaking prostitutes in, dealing marijuana to tenants – that one’s more of a public service in my opinion, but whatever – and wielding a firearm.”

“What can I do to get you to keep quiet about all that?”

“All I need is to get into the Steves’ apartment.”

The landlord breathed a sigh of relief. “Follow me then. You’ll need my key to get in.” Phillip followed the landlord up a few flights of stairs to the apartment and knocked on the door.

“Snips? Snails? It’s Flash.”

Phillip waited a moment and then gave a nod to the landlord, who unlocked the door and opened it. As the door opened, they saw Snips and Snails sitting dead on the sofa in front of a TV showing the menu screen of Jackass Number Two.

Flash held his arm out in front of the landlord, put a finger to his lips, and drew his handgun from its holster under his jacket. The landlord backed up behind the wall and Flash glanced around inside what he could see of the apartment and glanced through the gap between the door’s hinges. Seeing nothing, he stepped inside and pointed his handgun around. He made his way through the apartment, searching each room and coming up empty. He put his gun back in its holster and returned to the door.

“I didn’t find any assailants,” he said to the landlord. “You did me a favor by letting me in. I’m going to return the favor by making sure this all gets cleaned up. Soon a doctor and a cleaning crew are going to arrive. Let them in without issue. Don’t worry about their bodies or the trash. By the time my guys are done, all you’ll need to do is prepare the apartment for new tenants.”

The landlord was visibly shaken. “O… Okay. Do you need a copy of the key?”

“No, I’ll just take their copies,” Flash said, indicating Snips and Snails, “and we’ll return them when we’re done. Oh, one more thing: shut off the gas to this apartment. I smelled gas, so a gas line might have ruptured.”

“Right away, sir.” The landlord hurried down the stairs as Flash made his way back through the apartment, opening the windows to help ventilate the room. Flash walked to his associates’ bodies.

Snips and Snails looked peaceful, as if they’d just fallen asleep. Flash put his fingers to their necks to check for their pulses, but found none on either of them. He pulled out his phone and called Doc.

“Doc, I’m with Snips and Snails at their apartment. They’re dead.”

“I’m watching Pinkie at the moment, but I’ll get someone to monitor her and I’ll be right over.”

Flash thanked him and ended the call, then dialed the number for the cleaners.

“It’s Flash.”

“What can we do for you?”

“Snips and Snails are dead, and I’m at their apartment. There’s no sign of forced entry and there doesn’t appear to have been an altercation, but I suspect there’s more going on than I can see, so I need your crew’s eyes as well as their skills. I promised the landlord we’d take care of everything in the apartment.”

“We’ll be right over.”

Flash ended the call and started looking around the apartment. He returned to the door and looked for signs of a forced entry, but found none. He looked again for such evidence at the windows, but found none in the living room windows. He checked every window in the other rooms as well, and found that the bathroom door leading out to the fire escape was locked. He returned to the living room, finding a set of keys with Snails but not with Snips, and returned to the bathroom to unlock it. He opened it and stepped outside onto the fire escape landing.

“If I had wanted to kill Snips and Snails and make it look like an accident,” Flash asked himself, “how would I do it? And how would I get in?”

He thought about what he knew already. There was no sign of forced at the doors or any of the windows, so if there was an assailant they would’ve had to have been let inside, or found a way to enter without breaking anything. Only Snails had had his keys on him. If Snips had lost his keys recently, they could have been found – or stolen – by someone. Alternatively, Snips could have simply not had them when they went to get their dinner. The front door and the fire escape were the only access points to this apartment.

Flash took a closer look at the door on the fire escape, running his fingers along the trim, feeling for any damage. Not finding any, he knelt down and looked at the keyhole in the doorknob. He saw some scratches, but they easily could’ve been made by a key.

“Unless they’re fresh scratches,” he said to himself. He looked again, but couldn’t tell, so instead he took a picture with his phone and entered the apartment’s bathroom again. He heard a knock on the door and walked through the apartment. When he opened the door, he saw Doc standing there.

“Good morning, Flash,” Doc said and looked past him. “I see them. Have you touched them at all?”

“Only to take their pulses. And to look for their keys.”

Doc nodded and made his way to the bodies and went to work.

Phillip pulled out a chair from the kitchen area and sat in it. He took his phone out and turned it on, but stared at it. Soon the screen went black with inactivity as he pondered whether he should tell Sofia about what had happened to Snips and Snails. The store would be open by now, and if Sofia had taken his advice, she would be working with a customer or two. If not, she’d be in her office working on something else.

He turned on his phone again and called her. The phone rang twice before Sofia picked it up.

“Got news for me, Flash?”

“Depends. Did you take the call to avoid dealing with a customer, or because you were in your office avoiding dealing with customers?”

There was a moment of silence. “Office,” she admitted.

Phillip sighed, but couldn’t help from smiling. “Then I suppose it doesn’t have to wait, though I highly recommend that you should relax a little before I give any updates. You’re such a workaholic, Boss.”

“You love it, though, don’t you, Phil?”

Phillip could hear the smirk on her face through the phone.

“Yes, but that’s beside the point,” he said. “Please, relax. Let off some steam, read a book, go to the spa or something. I’ll give you an update when I get back.”

Without waiting for an answer, he ended the call. He knew he’d probably get some flack from Sofia after he returned to the music store, but it was worth it.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


“Asshole.” Sunset tossed her phone on her desk and leaned back in her chair. Still, he had a point. The store was open, but she had indeed chosen not to help customers. With protecting Felicity, Diane out of action, and now Snips and Snails going AWOL all in the last couple weeks, she was starting to get pretty worried, and the stress was starting to get to her.

Sunset turned around in her chair and looked at the bookshelves behind her. Most of the books in her office were about history, strategy, weaponry, and other topics that most people wouldn’t consider relaxing, and to be fair, neither did she. She’d read these books to familiarize herself with this world and how to survive in it, not for entertainment. She turned around again and picked up her phone, sending a text to Jacquelin.




AJ, got any book recommendations?
Something light-hearted and not too serious.


Weird request coming from you


I know


Pretty much anything fantasy is my go-to
Magic, dragons, mythical creatures
Nothing that actually exists, but helps me deal with the harshness of reality


Thanks. I’ll look some up.


No Game of Thrones tho
That’s the exact opposite of light-hearted
Start with any Xanth novel by Piers Anthony
There’s a whole chronology but each book is standalone so you can read them in any order



Sunset sent Arianna a text that she was going for a walk and would be back in an hour or two, and started making her way toward the library.
> 07: Una Ciliega Tira L'altra
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunset returned to the music store an hour later carrying the first two Xanth novels in a tote bag. She greeted some customers as she passed them on her way to her office. She opened the door and saw Phillip sitting at her desk. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it with a smirk.

“Welcome back, Phil. Don’t tell me you’ve decided to usurp me?”

“No. Not yet, anyway,” he added. Sunset’s smile faded when she noticed he wasn’t smiling.

“I walked to the library to get some books to read later,” she said, walking behind her desk and leaning her arm on top of his head as she placed the tote bag on her desk. “Thank you for making me take a break.”

“You’re welcome,” he said.

“All right, now get out of my chair,” she said, turning the chair around. He stood up and stepped aside, and Sunset sat down, crossing her legs and looked up at him. “Now, if I recall correctly, you said you’d give me an update.”

“It’s a good thing you’re sitting down. Snips and Snails are dead.”

Sunset turned her head away and took a deep breath. Snips and Snails hadn’t been the brightest of her associates, but they always did what they were asked to do. She leaned down to open the mini-fridge, took out a beer. She offered it to Phillip, who shook his head, and then opened it and took a big gulp before setting it on her desk and leaning back in her chair.

“What happened?”

“They were in the second film in a Jackass marathon and had an empty case of beer next to them. I found no evidence of a break-in. Doc found evidence of strangulation around their necks, but not from someone’s hands. The cleaners cleaned out the apartment and brought the bodies to our hospital so Doc could run full autopsies.”

“Strangled, hm?” Sunset thought for a moment. “Was there anything else?”

“The apartment smelled a bit like gas,” he replied. “I think someone might have tried to cover it up and make it look like an accident.”

“A cover-up would mean this was intentional, possibly a hit,” Sunset said, drumming her fingers on the desk. “Let’s call a meeting in the music store. Get everyone from the back, and I’ll clear out the music store.”

Phillip nodded and walked out of the office and turned right, followed close behind by Sunset who turned left. She opened the door to the music store and looked around.

Fortunately, she wouldn’t need to clear out many customers. Arianna was helping an adult customer with guitar accessories, and Jacqueline was nearby helping a teenager pick out a bass guitar. She stepped behind the counter, picked up a couple coupon vouchers, and then walked over to them and got their attention.

“Good afternoon,” she greeted them with a smile. “Are you finding everything all right today?”

“Yes, thank you,” the adult said. “Your employees are very helpful.”

“That’s great to hear,” Sunset responded. “Unfortunately, we just discovered a big problem in the back room, and we have to close the store for about an hour in order to fix it. We understand it’s not ideal, but here are some coupons for the inconvenience.” She handed each customer the coupons, which they took. “Thank you for your patience, and we hope to see you again soon!”

Sunset stepped away and stepped behind the counter again, looking through the day’s sales so far. Within minutes, Arianna and Jacqueline had finished ushering their customers out of the door. Arianna locked the door and put up a sign that read “Temporarily Closed for Emergency”, the sign they always put up when there was a capo meeting during business hours. Sunset sent a text to Phillip telling him to bring everyone into the store. Within a few minutes, everyone who was in the building had been ushered into the front of the store and lined up in front of the counter.

“Thank you all for coming so quickly,” Sunset said, standing behind the counter like it was a podium. “This morning, Snips and Snails were found dead in their apartment.” A few of the gang’s members started murmuring. “Doc is performing the autopsies now, but here’s what we know. They had strangulation marks around their necks and their apartment smelled like gas had leaked. There was no sign of forced entry. We believe they were unconscious from the resulting carbon monoxide, and someone strangled them to finish the job.

“This leads us to believe that they were murdered, and whoever did it is trying to cover it up. It may have been a hit, so we have to assume we all may be targeted at some point. This also doesn’t appear to be connected to what happened with Pinkie last week. In light of what happened to Snips and Snails, I urge you all to check the security in your own homes, apartments, and vehicles for bugged phones and other indications someone may be after you. Stay safe.”

Sunset walked back to the backroom, letting everyone talk amongst themselves.

“Sofia, what the hell?”

Sunset turned around, seeing Arianna and Jacqueline behind her. She hadn’t even made it to her office yet. Arianna crossed her arms and looked angry. Jacqueline, on the other hand, had a hard look on her face but her hands in her pockets.

“Someone murdering one of the Rainbooms is a big fucking deal,” Arianna continued. “Why weren’t we notified first?”

“I understand your frustration, Dash,” said Sunset. “I only found out myself when Flash told me about it maybe ten, fifteen minutes ago. If they had just died of carbon monoxide poisoning, I would’ve called a meeting with the capos, but with the strong possibility that they were murdered, and the chance that a hit was put out on them, I thought it best to tell everyone at the same time. Make sure your soldiers know to take precautions, by the way.”

“I agree with Dash,” Jacqueline said, “but I also think you made the right call.”

“Thank you, Applejack.”

Jacqueline turned toward Arianna. “What should we tell Felicity?”

“Ah, shit,” Arianna swore and rubbed her temple. “We’d better not. She’ll get scared.”

Sunset thought for a moment. Not telling Felicity was an option, but sooner or later she’d be likely to find out what the Rainbooms really were anyway, whether by figuring it out, by overhearing someone mentioning something they weren’t supposed to, or by being told. She immediately dismissed putting a hit on her. She then looked at Jacqueline.

“What do you think we should do, Applejack?”

Jacqueline thought for a minute. “We tell her what we are.”

Arianna looked shocked. “Are you crazy?”

“No, I ain’t.” Sunset could tell that Jacqueline was being serious. Her natural southern drawl always appeared through her practiced “normal” accent in situations like this. “She’s gonna find out sooner or later what we actually do for a living, and it’ll be better if we do it on our own terms in our favor than if she were to find out some other way.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Sunset said. “Now the question becomes how do we tell her?”

Jacqueline and Sunset looked at Arianna. Arianna looked at both of them and groaned. “Fine, I’ll tell her. But this was your guys’ idea, so you’re both coming with me.”

“Fair enough,” Jacqueline shrugged.

The trio made their way up the stairs to Felicity’s room and Arianna knocked on the door.

“Who is it?”

“Lis, it’s Arie. Jacqueline and Sofia are here too. Can we come in?”

“Oh, sure. Just give me a moment.”

Moments later, the door opened. Arianna thanked her and they all filed into her room.

“I’m sorry I don’t have more chairs,” Felicity said sheepishly. “Usually only Arianna comes to visit. Is something wrong?”

“Sorta,” Arianna said. Felicity put her head down, and Arianna went over, placing her hand on Felicity’s shoulder. “But not with you! You’re a great houseguest.”

“The problem,” said Jacqueline, “is that we haven’t been entirely honest with you. Something happened earlier today with some of our coworkers, and it made us realize we needed to come clean.”

“Oh? What happened?”

Jacqueline looked to Sunset. “The things we told you are true. We do run a music store, and we do also do what we can to protect the people of Canterlot. What we didn’t tell you is that the music store is the front we use for protecting people, and that we do more than protect people. The Rainbooms are a mafia – well, really more like a more organized version of a street gang – with the goal of challenging the Melodia crime family’s control over the city. While a large part of what we do is legitimate business, we’ve also done some bad and illegal things in order to challenge the Melodias.”

Felicity put her hands over her mouth. “Oh my.”

“I knew this was a bad idea,” Arianna grumbled, putting her arm around her friend.

“The night we rescued you, it was because one of our informants gave us some intel that you were being followed by some Melodia soldiers in our territory.”

“We also don’t use our real names all that often,” Jacquelin said. “Except for Sofia. She doesn’t have one. I’m Applejack, and Arianna here is Dash. Most of the other Rainbooms have nicknames as well.”

“Why don’t you use your real names?”

“It’s kind of a way to protect ourselves,” Sunset said. “By using nicknames for gang activity, there’s a chance it won’t be traced back to us and the music store.”

“Plus some of them are just easier to say,” Arianna said. “Like Esperanza. We call her Twilight.”

“Please understand,” Sunset said, “we kept this from you so you would feel safe with us that first night. Being rescued by criminals isn’t exactly the most reassuring thing to find out after being stalked by criminals.”

“May I ask what happened with your coworkers?”

Arianna and Jacqueline looked at Sunset. Even they weren’t sure if they should tell her this information.

“Two of our gang members – we called them Snips and Snails – were found dead in their apartment this morning. We suspect someone killed them and tried to cover it up.”

There was a moment of silence as they allowed Felicity to take it all in.

“This is a lot to take in,” she said.

“Yes, it is,” Sunset said. “We would understand if you wish to leave. In many regards, we’re not much better than the goons who attempted to abduct you.”

“It’s not that,” Felicity replied. “You took me in when I needed help and kept the truth from me because I was scared, and you didn’t want to scare me more. You are better than those creeps. I’ve seen how helpful you and your friends have been.”

Arianna looked at her friend. “So, you’re not gonna leave?”

“No, I want to stay. You may be gang members, but you’re good people.”

Sunset silently swore through the smile on her face. She hated being reminded of her Equestrian heritage. She was no longer Equestrian. She was Sofia Speranza, Donna of her own rising famiglia.

And yet, I keep referring to myself “Sunset” and not “Sofia”.

After meeting with Felicity, Sunset went back to her office and saw the partially drunk beer on her desk. Closing the door behind her, she moved over and finished the beer in one swig. She coughed a few times and wiped her mouth, dropping the bottle on her desk. She bent down and opened the minifridge, taking out another bottle and opening it. She would spend the night at her desk.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


On the first night of the portal being open again, Sunset passed through and was a pony again. She was in a castle she did not recognize, a castle that appeared to be made of crystal. She had learned about this kingdom under Princess Celestia’s tutelage. It was the Crystal Kingdom, a realm that had disappeared a thousand years ago when the Elements of Harmony defeated the tyrant King Sombra. However, Sunset had also figured out that unless the Elements of Harmony reversed what they had done, the effects of using the Elements would wear off after one thousand years. According to her calculations, the thousand years had recently passed, and the portal was open as she had calculated.

She used a dampening spell on her hooves so they wouldn’t make a sound on the shiny floors, and crept through the castle’s halls, ducking behind walls so she wouldn’t be seen by any passing guards. After some time searching, she found the hallway where the new princess Twilight Sparkle was staying the night. She slowly opened the door and crept inside the room.

Princess Twilight slept in the canopy bed on her back, and there was a baby dragon sleeping in a pet bed on the other side of a side table. Sunset wondered how she was comfortable laying on her wings like that. Sunset’s eyes were drawn to the side table.

There it was; the crown containing the Element of Magic. It really was incredible how alike it looked to Canterlot High’s fake crown for the Fall Formal. It looked different from how they looked when Princess Celestia had shown them to her in the ruins of her old castle, but the Elements of Harmony were also known to change depending on who was wielding them. When Celestia and her younger sister Luna had wielded them, they were regular faceted gems. Apparently when Twilight and her friends had become the new Bearers, the gems had transformed into their cutie marks and had wrapped themselves in gold to be worn as necklaces. Or in Twilight’s case, a crown.

Sunset stepped forward, casting a telekinesis spell to pick up the crown. It got too close to the lamp, which started to fall. She quickly cast a second spell to grab it before it hit the ground, and looked at Twilight, afraid she’d woken her. She breathed a sigh of relief and put the lamp back, then took the fake crown out from under her cloak and replacing it with the Element of Magic. She smiled at the successful stop, turned around, and began walking out. Unfortunately, the baby dragon turned in his sleep, and Sunset didn’t have enough time to adjust her step, so she fell down. The Element of Magic scattered across the floor.

“Huh? What?” So much for being stealthy. Sunset tripping over the dragon’s tail had caused him to wake up. She stood up, and then heard a voice behind her.

“My crown! She’s got my crown!”

Sunset bolted out of the room and down the hallway, hearing the hoofbeats of the princess behind her. She heard a crackle behind her, and saw a flash of light in front of her; the purple princess had teleported in front of her. Sunset smirked and kept galloping forward, preparing her own teleportation spell, and casting it just a moment before she would’ve run into Twilight. She reappeared behind Twilight, looked back with a grin, and started galloping again.

As she ran, she heard many more pairs of hooves galloping behind her. She looked back and was surprised to see five ponies chasing her on hoof and one with a multi-colored mane flying in the air. Sunset pushed herself to go faster, seeing the door to the room the mirror portal was in just within reach. Princess Twilight leaped forward, tackling her. The crown slipped out from the cloak and bounced on the floor and into the mirror. Sunset grinned. Everypony else gasped.

“What did you do with my crown?” Twilight demanded.

“Sorry it had to be this way,” Sunset said, teleporting closer to the portal, “Princess.”

Sunset ran through the portal, and found herself standing next to the statue’s pedestal, holding the crown after a final fight with the other girls. She grinned wider, cackling evilly.

“At last!” she exclaimed. “More power than I could ever imagine!” She placed the crown on her head, and to her surprise and horror, the crown pulled itself farther down her head. She tried pulling it off, but it just stuck itself tighter. Her hair started flowing and her boots left the ground as magic lifted her higher into the air, pummeling her with magical force. She screamed, feeling pain all over her body as if something inside her was trying to burst out of every pore.

She started cackling. The monster inside her had broken free.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Sunset jerked awake and looked around. She was in her office and had fallen asleep on her desk, an empty bottle of beer in her hand. She looked up and saw Felicity nearby, holding a tray with a teapot and two teacups.

“Hey, Felicity.” Sunset rubbed her aching forehead. “What time is it?”

“Almost six o’clock,” she replied.

“Six in the evening?” Sunset asked.

Felicity nodded. “Would you like some tea?”

Sunset nodded. “What kind is it?”

“Chamomile, good for headaches and other symptoms of hangovers,” Felicity answered. “The others saw you’d been drinking, so I asked them to get it for me.”

Felicity set the tray on Sunset’s desk and started pouring tea into the cups. “Sugar?”

“Will it help?”

“It can.”

“Then yes.”

Felicity dropped a sugar cube into a cup and handed it to Sunset. Sunset took the cup and reached to grab another cube of sugar from the dish and popped it into her mouth. She held the cup to her face and breathed in the scent before taking a sip.

“Where are Arianna and Jacqueline?”

“Working. They reopened the store while you were drinking. May I sit down?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sunset said. “I should’ve offered. Please, sit.”

Felicity sat down across from Sunset and took a sip of her tea. “Sofia, may I ask you something?”

“You can ask, but I can’t guarantee I’ll give a desirable answer.”

“Why did you decide to start a gang?”

Sunset sighed and set her teacup down. Her head still hurt, but it was already starting to feel better.

“That’s a long story.”

“We’ve got time.”

“I came to this city when I was ten. I was alone, and Arianna took me in.”

“That must’ve been awful.”

“It was, but being with Arianna certainly helped. She was having an argument with a girl named Gilda when I arrived here. They fought and Arianna won.”

“Gilda?” Felicity looked a little shaken, but there was something in her eyes that Sunset couldn’t place.

“You knew Gilda?”

Felicity nodded. “My brother Xavier’s death wasn’t the only reason we moved. Gilda would constantly bully me when we were children. She was held back a grade, and I was her favorite victim. One of the last things Arianna told me before my family left was that she and Gilda were going to start a street gang. I begged her not to, but I guess without me to stop her it was inevitable.”

“Sweet Celestia,” Sunset said. “Now it makes sense why Gilda wouldn’t take any of Arianna’s ideas seriously after agreeing to be joint leaders. She must’ve thought you were making her soft and wanted to make sure the gang would be strong.”

“It’s all my fault!” Felicity cried out and started sobbing with her head in her hands.

Damn it. Sunset stood up and made her way around the desk. She pulled up another chair and wrapped her arm around Felicity’s shoulders.

“No, Felicity, it’s not your fault. What happened was out of your control, and if anyone’s at fault, it’s Gilda.” Felicity’s sobbing sounds softened. “None of us have heard from her since Arianna left their gang, so it seems she gave up on that particular endeavor.”

Felicity looked up. “You mean it?”

“I do,” Sunset replied. “And please do me a favor and don’t mention this to anyone. I’ve got a reputation I need to keep up.”

“Why?”

“That’s a bit of a long story too. The short version is I need to keep myself tough until I can get back to the place where I came from. It’s a much more peaceful city than this one.”

“I wish I could go there,” Felicity said, picking up her teacup again. “I’ve wished my whole life that this world could be more peaceful.”

“‘More peaceful’ is a relative term,” Sunset said. “There may not have been organized crime controlling every aspect of life, but we still had people who were self-serving, deceptive, greedy, cruel, and manipulative, not to mention all the dangerous plants, animals, and other creatures that could kill you.”

“Oh…”

Sunset finished her tea and set the teacup down on the tray. “Thank you for the tea, Felicity.” She took a couple more sugar cubes from the dish and set them by her desk. “A few for the road,” she said with a smile.

“Would you like to keep the tray so you can have more tea later?” Felicity asked.

“That won’t be necessary,” Sunset answered. “My head feels well enough to make an important call.”

“All right. I’ll see you later, then.” Felicity picked up the tray and walked out of Sunset’s office.

Perhaps being Equestrian isn’t all bad, she thought as she watched her leave, and popped a cube of sugar into her mouth to suck on. She scrolled through her phone and dialed Octavia’s number.

The phone rang a few times before Octavia answered. “Sofia, buonasera.”

“Buonasera, Octavia. Can we schedule another lunch meeting? There’ve been some developments and I would appreciate some advice.”
> 08: Così è la Vita
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“You can go ahead and drop me off, Phil,” Sunset said as Phillip drove into the hospital’s parking lot. “I may be a while.”

“You got it, Boss.”

Phillip drove up to the entrance. Sunset stepped out of Phillip’s car, walked into the Rainbooms’ hospital as Phillip pulled away to find a parking spot, passing the reception desk without a word, and made her way up to Doc’s office. She knocked on the door and a moment later he opened it.

“Thank you for coming, Sofia,” he said and welcomed her in.

Sunset shrugged. “I needed some time away from the office, and your text came at a great time. What have you got for me?”

“Two things: an update on Pinkie and an update on the autopsies I performed on Snips and Snails. Which would you like first?”

Sunset thought for a moment. Diane went under surveillance first, but Snips and Snails were more recent and possibly more important.

“Pinkie.”

Doc picked up a file from his desk and handed it to Sunset. “Her condition remains stable but with signs of improvement. We have daily therapy sessions, and we’ve found a medication that appears to help her without negatively impacting her performance.”

Sunset flipped through the pages, not understanding everything written in the reports but understanding enough. “That’s a relief.” She closed the file and handed it back to him. “And Snips and Snails?”

Doc took the file folder and set it back on his desk, then picked up a second folder and handed it to Sunset.

“I’ve confirmed that Snips and Snails died of asphyxiation by strangulation. Their windpipes were crushed and the skin on their necks showed evidence of bruising, but as we guessed from our initial investigations, it wasn’t from someone using their hands. Instead, it was with an instrument that applied evenly distributed direct pressure all around the neck except for a small area on one side of each.” Doc pointed to a photograph of Snails’s neck that showed less bruising than the surrounding area. “Phillip mentioned smelling gas in the apartment, so I ran samples of their blood. As expected, their blood had a high blood alcohol content, as we found a case of empty beer bottles. Their blood also showed a concentration of carbon monoxide, but not enough to kill them despite their high BAC.”

Sunset looked up from reading the file. “Can being drunk affect how your body responds to carbon monoxide?”

“Yes, ma’am. If you’re drunk, it’s likely you won’t feel any symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning before falling unconscious or dying. If I had to guess, the assailant tampered with the gas line on their oven until they passed out, and then wrapped something around their necks to kill them.”

“Our suspicions were sort of correct, then,” said Sunset. “Someone murdered them, but wasn’t attempting to cover it up.”

“It might’ve fooled someone not as smart as us.”

Sunset nodded. “They’d have to be dumb as shit to not understand what happened. Thanks Doc. I’ve got what I need to meet with Octavia about.” Sunset turned to walk out the door.

“What about you, ma’am?” Doc asked before she could leave. Sunset turned around with a questioning look on her face. “Two of your associates dead, and one of your most valuable enforcers has mental health issues. Even if you weren’t the leader of a gang, that can affect anyone’s mental health.”

“It’s stressful, but I’ll be fine,” Sunset simply stated and left the doctor’s office.

“That’s what they all say,” Doc sighed and returned to his work.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Esperanza walked into her lab and turned on the light. S.P.I.K.E. woke up from his sleep mode and rolled over to her.

“Good morning, S.P.I.K.E.,” she said. S.P.I.K.E. let out an electronic bark. Esperanza looked at the clock above her door. “11:59 is still morning. I might have to check your date and time settings to see if they need to be recalibrated.”

S.P.I.K.E. rolled over near one Esperanza’s primary computer and barked again. Esperanza followed him and sat down, then brought up her email application and one of the programs she had been working on. S.P.I.K.E. barked again, and she looked down at him.

“What is it, S.P.I.K.E.?”

S.P.I.K.E. began uploading a digital facsimile of part of Esperanza’s computer and keyboard to a program she had running in the background. A circle appeared around an anomaly in the digital image, and Esperanza looked at where the anomaly was in the real world. The anomaly on the image turned out to be the missing AI chip for the baking bot.

“Aha!” she said, picking it up, then brought it close to her face and adjusted her glasses to look at it. “Wait, this isn’t where I left it, and surely I would’ve seen it here at least once in the last few days.”

She made a mental note to deal with that issue later, and closed the program that S.P.I.K.E. had uploaded the image to. She plugged the chip into a slot in her computer and a program opened up on the computer displaying thousands of lines of code, and she started reviewing them.

Some time later there was a knock on her door. She got up and opened it, seeing Jacqueline. “What can I help you with, Applejack?”

“I didn’t have much to do today, so I figured I’d swing by and see how that baking robot is comin’ along.”

“There hasn’t been any real progress since I misplaced the AI chip, but on the plus side I found it this morning.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Yes, it is! However, it’s not where I thought I put it, and it was right next to my primary computer, a location I would’ve looked at dozens of times each day since I lost it. Not to mention S.P.I.K.E. would have located it the day I lost it but didn’t.”

“Really? That’s strange.”

“Yes, it is,” Esperanza said. “Logically, that would only happen if someone had taken it and brought it back.”

“You sayin’ we’ve got a mole?”

“I wasn’t, but now that you mention it, with what happened to Snips and Snails, that does seem like a possibility.”

“We’d better tell Sofia when she gets back from her meeting with Octavia,” Jacqueline said. “She’ll need to know. Maybe she even learned something when she visited Doc this morning. Let’s think about the mole possibility for a minute. If someone stole the AI chip, what could they have wanted it for?”

Esperanza thought for a moment. “They could’ve copied the code to use in their own projects. Not that it would do them much good, since I’ve been having issues adapting it from S.P.I.K.E.’s programming to a more sophisticated robot–”

S.P.I.K.E. barked.

“Don’t get mad, S.P.I.K.E.,” Esperanza said to the robotic canine. “I built you in high school, and I’ve learned a lot since then. Which reminds me. S.P.I.K.E., make a note that I need to add some upgrades.”

S.P.I.K.E. barked again.

“You talk with your robot?” Jacqueline asked, and Esperanza nodded.

“Yes. I didn’t have a lot of friends – well, I didn’t have any friends – before I transferred from Crystal Prep to Canterlot High. Even at CHS after meeting all of you, I built S.P.I.K.E. so I could hold conversations because I spent a lot of time alone.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“I used S.P.I.K.E.’s AI as a basis for the AI for the cooking robot. Actually, I should add the AI into the selfie drone as well, so it can be commanded–”

“Twilight,” interrupted Jacqueline, getting Esperanza’s attention. “Focus.”

“Right, sorry.” Esperanza adjusted her glasses. “The AI that I created for S.P.I.K.E. can be theoretically be adapted to allow any robot to follow commands and do tasks. The specific commands and tasks can be changed to pretty much anything. S.P.I.K.E.’s are specialized for doing tricks and helping me, and the cooking robot’s will be specialized for cooking and baking.”

“Interesting,” Jacqueline said. “So, worst case scenario, if someone technologically capable were to decipher your code, they could theoretically add new programming that could overwrite your programming at their command.”

“I suppose that is possible,” Esperanza said. “I’ll have to increase the security firewalls in our drones then.”

“Do you want me to start bringing them over?” Jacqueline asked.

“That won’t be necessary,” Esperanza replied. “I need to write the new code first and test it so it works properly, and then it’ll be faster to bring it to the armory when I’m done and install the update wirelessly to all of them at the same time.”

“Noted.” Jacqueline looked at the clock on her phone. “I haven’t had lunch yet. Did you eat yet?”

“Yes, I did.”

“All right then. I’ll talk to you later then.”

“Have a good day, Applejack,” Esperanza said and turned back toward her computer. S.P.I.K.E. rolled up beside her, rubbing against her leg. She reached down and placed her hand on top of his head to rub it as she scrolled through more lines of code.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Sunset and Phillip sat at their usual table at the café, waiting again for Octavia to arrive.

“I really shouldn’t be surprised that she’s late again,” Phillip said.

“No,” replied Sunset. “No, you should not.”

Twelve minutes after the agreed upon time, Octavia’s Cadillac appeared around the corner and Sunset waved down a waiter. The waiter arrived and Sunset told him to bring four glasses of water, and as he left Sunset and Phillip stood up to greet Octavia, who had just stepped out of the car.

“Octavia, buon pomeriggio.”

“Sofia, buon pomeriggio.”

They greeted each other with kisses on each other’s cheeks and sat down.

“It’s good to see you again, but on the phone the other day it seemed like you were having some trouble with the Rainbooms.”

Sunset appreciated Octavia bypassing the small talk and getting to the point. Italians don’t usually cut straight to the important topics in a conversation, as she had learned as a teenager while researching Italian culture. Sunset herself was always punctual, a side effect of growing up in the Princess’s castle in the capital city of Canterlot, and it was something Sunset had had to deal with over the years without complaint, lest she risk offending Octavia more than she wanted to.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Sunset confirmed. “One of my capos had a mental breakdown, and two of my associates were found murdered in their apartment.”

“Oh dear.” The waiter returned with the waters, and Sunset and Octavia thanked him. He took their orders before going back to the kitchen. “Do you think the two events are related?”

Sunset shook her head. “No, the mental breakdown appeared to be completely unconnected. She was on a job with a client. The client said something that set something off inside her, and she mortally wounded him before she realized what had happened. The associates were watching a movie and drinking beer when they passed out and then were strangled to death.”

“I can see why you wanted to speak with me,” said Octavia. “Do you have any theories why they were killed?”

“Nothing confirmed yet, but we do have one that’s most likely. It’s possible it was a hit.”

Octavia folded her hands in front of her face. “Who on Earth would want to put a hit on your gang?”

“I’m sure we’ve made many enemies over the last few years,” Sunset answered with a sigh. “I’m sure it can’t be the Melodias, however. Your famiglia has always been good to us, and we to you.”

“Indeed,” said Octavia before taking a sip of her water. “Speaking of which, I have an update on those associates who attempted to assault that Felicity woman a couple weeks ago.”

Sunset sat up straighter. “What have you found?”

“As it turns out, we did have an associate check into one of our hospitals for pain in his side. We were able to track him down, confront him, and persuade him to tell us what happened. Neither man still works for us, and have a new hobby involving fishes.”

Sunset smiled. “Nice metaphor.”

“Thank you.”

At that moment the waiter returned with their food. They thanked him again and began eating their lunch.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


After eating lunch, Applejack returned to the music store to wait for Sofia and Flash to return, noticed some instruments were sitting out, and got to work putting them back in their place and giving them a quick polish. As she worked, she whistled a jaunty folk toon her very large family played at every family reunion. Once all the instruments were where they belonged, she picked up a broom and started sweeping the floors. She was about half done when she heard the bell above the door ring.

“Good afternoon,” she said, turning around to see Sofia and Flash. “Oh, welcome back. I’m just doing a bit of cleaning.”

“Thank you, Applejack. No customers today?”

“Not since this morning,” she said and set the broom against a display. “What’d you learn?”

“Pinkie’s condition seems to be improving, Snips and Snails were definitely murdered, and the Melodias have dealt with the two goons who were stalking Felicity. We won’t be seeing them again.”

“Felicity will be glad to hear that. We’ve got some updates as well.”

“I’ll be in the back,” Phillip said, and made his way through the employee door.

“What have you got for me?” Sofia asked.

“You know that AI chip Twilight’s been missing?” Sofia nodded. “She found it while you were out, but it wasn’t where she put it, and S.P.I.K.E. would’ve detected sooner if it was in her lab the whole time.” Applejack moved closer and spoke in a low voice so only Sofia could hear. “We think there might be a mole.”

“That could definitely explain why the computer chip went missing, as well as who might have wanted Snips and Snails dead.” Sofia thought for a moment. “Any theories on who it might be?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but haven’t come up with any good ideas yet. The latest the mole could’ve infiltrated was a few weeks ago around the time we took in Felicity, but I doubt it’s her. She’s very shy and only just started to learn how to protect herself. It doesn’t make sense for her to commit espionage.”

“And the earliest?”

Applejack shrugged. “Could go back as far as when you and Dash started this whole thing.”

“In other words,” Sofia said, “no ideas. I’ll get our intel people working on it.”

Sofia started to walk back toward her office, but stopped and turned around when Applejack said her name. “Sofia, we’re both workaholics and we both know it. Hell, I cleaned the store because there wasn’t much else to do. Have you had a chance to read those books yet?”

“Not yet,” Sofia admitted. “I’d just come back from the library with the first two Xanth books when Flash told me about Snips and Snails. I’ve been dealing with that since, and haven’t had a chance to sit down and read them.”

“Make sure you make time to read them, then,” Applejack replied. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.”

Sofia laughed. “Okay, Rick.”

“Come again?”

Sofia looked at Applejack. “You’ve never watched Casablanca?”

“Nope, but I’ve heard of it,” Applejack replied. “Is that where that quote’s from?”

“Yup!” Sofia laughed. “As well as ‘I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship’, ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’, and ‘We’ll always have Paris’. Girl, you have got to watch it. Buy it, rent it, stream it on HBO Max, or hell, use a VPN to watch it on Netflix. It earned its reputation as a great American classic. Catcher in the Rye, on the other hand…”

Now it was Applejack’s turn to laugh. “I know, right? That book was terrible! No plot, no conflict, nothin’ interesting whatsoever!”

“I’ve read encyclopedias with more substance than Catcher in the Rye.”

“You’ve also got two books that are leagues better still sitting on your desk waiting to be read,” Applejack reminded her. Sofia pointed a finger at her.

“You’re right. Thanks for reminding me. Keep up the good work, AJ. The floor looks great on that half of the store.” Sofia hurried to the back door before Applejack could respond. Applejack chuckled and picked up the broom again.

Sunset stepped into her office and looked at the bag on her desk that held the Xanth books. She walked over, took out A Spell for Chameleon, the first book in the series, and opened it. She sat in her chair, leaning back as she began reading.

A Spell for Chameleon followed the journey of a young man named who was banished to the human world for breaking an important law.

Sunset put a bookmark in the pages to mark her place and set the book back down on her desk. Gee, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it? she sighed. Sunset pulled out her phone and sent Phillip a text.




Got any plans tonight?


Nope


Wanna have a date night?
I need to get my mind off things.


:)



Sunset smiled.




7 PM
My place.





~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


The bell over the bar’s entrance rang, and in walked a beautiful woman wearing a sleek purple and black dress that hugged all her curves. The dress belonged to Rarity, the most elegant and sophisticated of the Rainbooms. Some of the bar’s patrons turned to look at her. Some of the men whistled at the beauty that had just arrived.

Rarity smiled at the men looking at her and sauntered her way over to the bar counter and sat at a stool.

“What’ll you have tonight, Rachel?” asked the bartender.

“Well, Sam, I have a need to either be fucked or to kill someone tonight,” Rarity answered.

“The usual, then.” Rarity nodded, and Sam the bartender poured one half ounce of St. Germain elderflower liqueur and two ounces of vodka in a mixing glass and stirred it, then poured it into a martini glass, and garnished it with a lemon twist.

“Mmm, thank you, Sam,” Rarity said, taking the glass and taking a sip.

A blonde-haired man in a white suit that accentuated his athletic physique came over and sat down next to her.

“Good evening, Ma’am.”

“Good evening, Sir.”

“A light beer, please,” he said to Sam, who started pouring him a light beer from the tap. “I’m Patrick,” he said, turning back to Rarity, “Patrick Blumenthal.” He smiled, holding out his hand. Rarity looked at it.

“Charmed, I’m sure.”

“Oh, very. It’s not often I meet someone as attractive as I am.”

Oh, goodie. A narcissist.

“Oh?” Rarity feigned confusion. “How so?”

“I’m handsome, and you’re beautiful,” he replied. “It’s like destiny destined us to be together.”

Rarity rolled her eyes in her mind. Not my destiny, if I can help it.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Blumenthal, we seem to be on the same end of the magnet.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Please leave, and if you don’t, I’ll get Sam to throw you out and ban you. I’m sure you don’t want that, as this is the most prestigious bar in town. Oh, and do take your light beer with you. I won’t be needing it.”

Patrick looked confused, and after a few seconds of trying to come up with a clever response got up and left. Rarity took another sip of her martini when she heard another man’s voice on her other side.

“He’s going to be sleeping alone tonight.”

Rarity turned her head, seeing another blonde-haired man, this one wearing white thick-rimmed glasses. This man didn’t wear a suit, but wore a more sensible outfit to wear at a bar, khakis and a green sweater.

“You look familiar,” said Rarity. “Don’t tell me, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you before somewhere.”

The man sat up straight and flashed his teeth in a smile. Rarity let out a little gasp.

“I’ve got it!” she shouted, and a few patrons turned to face her. Rarity lowered her voice. “You’re Trevor Hood, one of my favorite travel bloggers.”

“That I am,” he replied, “but please, call me Trev.”

Goodness, so informal, Rarity thought. I hope he hasn’t been drinking for a while already.

Trevor pointed at Rarity’s martini glass. “What kind of martini? A Vesper?”

“Oh, no, a true Vesper is made with a type of vermouth that isn’t made any longer, and is often ruined by making it the James Bond way. This is made with St-Germain elderflower liqueur and vodka.”

“May I have a taste?”

“Yes, but not of mine. Sam!” Sam finished pouring another customer’s drink and came over. “One more usual for Trev here.” Rarity winked at him with the eye Trevor couldn’t see, and Sam nodded as he began mixing another drink. Moments later he set it in front of Trevor with a straw. Trevor took up some of the cocktail in the straw and dropped it into his mouth to taste. He held the cocktail over his tongue to taste it.

“Interesting,” he said. “I taste some sweetness and tang aside from the vodka. What is it?”

“Elderflower liqueur.”

“I’m more of a wine man myself, but this isn’t bad.”

“Whether you finish it or choose to buy it for me, Trev, either way I won’t be paying for that one.” Rarity winked at him with a smile, Trevor smiled back at her.

“I get the impression you do this often,” he told her.

“Do what?” Rarity again feigned confusion, this time more playfully.

“Offer drinks to men that they’ll have to pay for instead of you,” he answered. “I like that.”

Rarity smiled at him. As they talked, she found her desire to kill had softened, replaced with a desire to get to know this man better. Patrons filtered in and out of the door as Rarity and Trevor continued talking. Eventually, Sam rang the bell behind the counter.

“Last call, everyone,” he said, then tapped on the counter near Rarity and Trevor. “That means you too, Rachel.”

“Your name’s Rachel?” Trevor asked Rarity. “I didn’t realize we never talked about your name yet.”

Rarity nodded. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s a lovely name, but also seems a bit… mundane for the personality I’ve come to know. Do you have a nickname?”

Rarity thought for a moment about whether or not to tell him the name she used with the Rainbooms. “I’ve always liked the name Di.”

“Short for Diana?”

Rarity shook her head and smiled. “Short for diamond, darling.” But also because “die Trevor” amuses me, Rarity giggled.

“Do you have a home to go to tonight, or would you like to join me at my hotel?”

“Mister Hood,” Rarity smiled and gasped. “Do you take me for that kind of lady?”

“Only if you’d like to be.”

Rarity smiled. After paying their bills Trevor held out his arm, which Rarity took in hers, and they left the bar and hailed a cab. Soon they arrived at the hotel Trevor was staying at and made their way up to his room. He ushered her in and closed the door behind them. When he turned back around, Rarity had slipped out of her dress and let it drop to the floor, revealing her nude body underneath. Trevor took her hand, gave it a kiss, and laid her on the bed. He spread her legs and kneeled at the foot, bringing his lips to her warm, moist folds. Rarity closed her eyes and moaned as he showed her his more intimate skills.

Oh, he’s good, she thought through the moans. It should be a wonderful, murder-less night.
> 09: O Mori O Peri
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two days later, Sunset and Arianna waited outside the Rainbooms’ music store, awaiting the arrival of Doc and Diane. After some more monitoring, Doc had left Sunset a voicemail that Diane was ready to be released, and Sunset wanted Diane to feel like she was coming home to a party.

“Bet ya can’t guess who Rarity’s been seeing lately,” Arianna said.

“If it’s not someone from the Rainbooms or the Melodias,” Sunset responded, “I’m not sure I care.”

Arianna ignored the comment. “Some hipster named Trevor. I guess he’s some kind of influencer.”

Sunset sighed. “Who isn’t an influencer these days?” she lamented. “The media considers having a few hundred followers makes you popular enough to change enough of the overall public opinion of something. It’s just way cheaper than getting someone who’s actually important enough to make a difference.”

Arianna looked at Sunset. “Hell, we’re more influential than most social media influencers. We just don’t shout it from the fucking rooftops like dumbasses.”

Soon a car pulled up, and Arianna and Sunset saw Diane’s distinctive curly hair through the car’s window. Doc stepped out and made his way around the car, opening the passenger door to let Diane out.

“Welcome home, Pinkie,” Sunset said, helping her out of the car.

“Thanks,” Diane said, standing on the curb. There was a moment of silence.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Diane said. “I feel more like myself, but also not at all like myself.”

“That’s a common side effect of new medication,” Doc said. He reached into the car and pulled out a bag. “Here’s her medication. Instructions are on the bottle. Text me if anything changes.”

“We will,” Sunset said, and ushered Diane through the store to the back offices. “Are you hungry?” Diane shook her head. “Thirsty?” Diane nodded. Sunset called out to some associates to bring some water to the conference room, and brought Diane there. “We’ll update you in here with what happened since you’ve been gone.” Arianna tapped Sunset on her shoulder and nodded her head to the side. “We’ll be out here.” Sunset closed the door and turned to Arianna.

“She’s so different than what she was like a few weeks ago,” Arianna said. “How is this going to change things?”

“In theory, it won’t change things than what the last couple weeks have been,” Sunset answered. “Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’ve gotten too complacent with relying on her luckiness, and what Pinkie did was the kick in the ass I needed to get back on track.”

“Sunset, she’s our friend!” Arianna said, lowering her voice so she could use her real name. “We’ve still got to support her no matter what!”

“Dash, she went through a traumatic experience. Supporting her means being more delicate now so she doesn’t snap again. The hell of going through what she went through is only made worse by not being allowed to heal from it in the first place.”

“Sofia, the Rainbooms have been responsible for a ton of murders, some just as gruesome as what Pinkie did.”

“I’m speaking from personal experience,” Sunset retorted. “Well, sort of. It’s the personal experiences of my former mentor. She went through a lot of traumatic experiences before I was even born.”

Arianna sighed. “Fuck. Fine. We’ll do it your way.”

“Arianna, I’m thinking of the future of our gang.” Sunset pointed a finger to Arianna’s heart. “Your gang. I’ve been thinking a lot about where I came from recently, and to be honest, I’m not sure if I’ll decide to go back when I get the chance, but until then I want to make sure the Rainbooms are successful without me, and I also think you’ve gotten better at running things.”

“You really mean that?”

“I do. If there’s anyone here I trust to take over for me, it’s you.”

Arianna smiled. “Thanks, Sofia.”

An associate arrived with a pitcher of water and some glasses on a tray.

“Now come on. Pinkie’s waiting for us.”


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Applejack had just spent the day supervising the Rainboom associates and delegating tasks, and was looking forward to a short break in her office. She closed the door behind her and sat in her chair, resting her feet on her desk as she leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes.

There was a knock on her door, and she opened her eyes. She groaned and got up to open the door, seeing Felicity there.

“Howdy, Felicity,” she said. “What can I do ya fer?”

“I’ve never heard you speak like that,” Felicity said softly. “Is that your natural accent?”

“Yup. I get taken more seriously when I hide it from most of our associates.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“Yup. Anyway, how can I help you?”

“I was wondering if you wanted to go for a walk in the park or something. I've barely left this building since I arrived, and I miss seeing nature.”

“You know what? That sounds like a great idea. I was about to take a break anyway.”

Applejack stepped outside her office and locked it behind her. Felicity followed her toward the music store until they stopped at Sofia’s door, which Applejack knocked on. Sofia looked up.

“I’m escorting Felicity to the park. She’s been cooped up in here for a while and hasn’t seen the outside world.”

“Oh, damn,” Sofia said and covered her mouth. “I can’t believe I forgot about that. Definitely, go ahead.”

Felicity thanked her and followed Applejack out onto the street. Felicity took a deep breath and smiled. They walked in silence for a minute before Applejack started talking.

“You don’t need to worry, Felicity,” she said. “Though I didn’t bring a weapon this time, I’m still able to help defend you if anyone were to attack us. Not that they would, if they knew who I was.”

“What if they don’t know who you are?”

“Then they’d better learn quick once they try to start somethin’.” They approached a park close to the high school. Applejack’s mind wandered as they began walking down a path. Felicity stopped at every tree, looking into the branches to look at the birds and critters living among the branches. When they came to a bridge, Applejack stopped in the middle and leaned against the railing, looking out at the pond. Felicity nearly passed her but joined her on the bridge.

They stood looking at the animals in and around the pond for some time before Felicity broke the silence.

“Do you have any family?”

Applejack looked at her, then back at the pond. She’d been so busy the last couple years with her work, she hadn’t had much opportunity to think about her family. “Yup. Granny, older brother, and younger sister, plus dozens of relatives all across the country.”

“Do they know what you do for a living?”

Applejack shook her head. “Nope. Mack might’ve figured it out at some point, but has never said anything to me. He always was smarter than he seems. My little sister April has no idea, though. She’d run her mouth if she did.”

“And your grandmother?”

“I can’t bring myself to say anything to her, nor to lie to her about it, so I always find a way to avoid the topic.”

“What about your parents?”

“They died not long after April was born.”

“Gang violence?” Felicity asked.

“Nope,” Applejack simply stated. “Car accident during the winter before I joined the Rainbooms, so it couldn’t have been. Their car slipped on some ice and they died of hypothermia after they were pulled from the wreck. Sometimes, bad things just happen.”

“Why did you join the Rainbooms?”

Applejack looked at her, an eyebrow raised. “Why all the questions?” she asked, making Felicity shy away. “Shoot. Didn’t mean it like I was mad at you.”

“It’s okay,” Felicity replied.

“I was friends with Arianna for a while before joining, and after a while I guess it just seemed the natural thing to do. I suppose that might not make sense to you, seeing that being in a gang was how your brother died, and why it took fifteen years to come back.” Felicity thought for a moment. “Why did you come back to Canterlot if you left because of what happened to him?”

Felicity pulled her arms into her body and looked away.

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Shoot, now I’m the one pryin’,” Applejack realized. “I’m sorry about that. It’s not my place to know, and I shouldn’t have asked.” Felicity thanked her. “Anyway, shall we keep walking?”

Felicity looked out at the pond again, then looked around the rest of the park. “It’s okay,” she replied. “We can go back to the music store now.”

Applejack nodded and led Felicity back to the music store.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Diane sat at her kitchen table, a bowl of cereal sitting in front of her. The jug of milk was also sitting beside her. She stared at the cereal getting soggier as it steeped in the milk.

“Oh yeah, a spoon.”

She leaned over and pulled a drawer open beside her, pulling out a spoon as she began to eat her cereal. She finished eating and drank the rest of the milk out of the bowl.

Doc had told her that short bouts of forgetfulness were a known side effect of the medication she was taking, but Pinkie was no stranger to forgetting some things. She’d forgotten things many times since she was a little girl, but she had to admit that the medication seemed to make them longer and more frequent. She put the dishes in the sink and walked to her bedroom.

She paused at her door and listened around her. She thought she’d heard something again, something like a low buzzing sound, but as she listened for it, she couldn’t hear it again. Just like all the other times since she had returned from the hospital.

She pulled her phone from her pocket and speed-dialed Doc.

“Good morning, Pinkie,” Doc said through the phone. “How can I help you?”

“Are hallucinations a side effect of my medication?”

“Not as far as I know,” he replied. “The side effects listed on the label of the medication list all the known side effects, but it may not include very rare side effects that people taking the medication haven’t experienced yet. Have you been seeing things?”

“No, I haven’t been seeing things,” Pinkie replied. “I think I might be hearing things, a buzzing sound sometimes when I’m in my bedroom.”

“Only in your bedroom?”

“Mhm. I haven’t heard it anywhere else.”

“Then perhaps it’s not a hallucination. If the sound is localized to your bedroom, it may be some kind of insect in the walls, or a light bulb. When I was a teenager I discovered I could hear a buzzing from some fluorescent light bulbs. I thought it was the sound of photons hitting the glass of the bulb, but as it turns out it was because they were attached to dimmer switches.”

“I don’t have any dimmer switches in my apartment,” Pinkie said.

“Then the most likely culprit is insects,” Doc replied. “I would recommend calling a pest control company to come check it out.”

“Thanks, Doc,” she said and ended the call. She switched to an internet browser app to look up pest control companies, and called the number for one of them. The phone rang twice before someone picked up.

“Canterlot Pest Control, this is Jessica. How can I help you?”

“Hello, my name is Diane. I’ve been hearing a buzzing sound when I’m in my bedroom, and I think I might have bees or wasps in my walls. Can you send someone out to check?”

“Certainly. What’s your address?”

Pinkie told Jessica her address and set up an appointment for the next day. After ending the call, Pinkie walked around her room with her ear to the wall, listening for where the buzzing was loudest. She heard the most buzzing and crawling of little insect legs near one of the room’s corners by the window, and made a note to tell the exterminator at the apartment the next day.

Pinkie took her purse off the hook by the front door and placed it around her shoulder, stepping outside and walking to the nearest bus stop a block and a half away. She hummed a tune to herself while she waited for the bus to arrive. Eventually it did and she stepped inside, dropped change in the machine, and took her ticket from it. She made her way to the back seat and sat down, putting her earbuds into her ears, and started playing music through her phone.

She looked out the window, closing her eyes and letting her mind wander. She wasn’t aware of how much time had passed before she opened her eyes and saw Canterlot High School through the window. She smiled at the reminder that the medication had not taken away her luckiness after all, and stood up before making her way to the door of the bus.

Pinkie stepped off the bus when the bus door had opened and began walking toward the music store.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Sunset sat in a comfortable chair in the corner of her office before the music store was to open, reading a Xanth novel in the light of a floor lamp. She had just finished a chapter when she heard the staff door open and saw Diane pass in front of her door.

“Morning, Pink.”

“Morning, Sofia.”

“How are you feeling today?” Sofia asked, holding her finger inside the book to keep her place as she closed the cover.

“I’m all right. I heard a noise in my bedroom earlier that might be bees, so I called an exterminator to come check it out tomorrow.”

“Bees?” Sunset asked. “That’s not good.”

“Nope. On the plus side, I think I’m starting to be lucky again. I closed my eyes when I got on the bus and when I opened them again the bus was approaching the stop a couple blocks away.”

Sunset smiled. “That’s good to hear. Ready to help customers?” Since Diane’s return, Sunset had limited her duties to store-related duties such as dealing with customers and making sure each display instrument was properly tuned and dusted.

Diane gave Sunset a sly look. “Is anyone ever ready to deal with customers.”

“Fair point,” Sunset replied. She took out her phone and looked at the time. “I’d better start opening up.”

Sunset placed a bookmark between the pages she had her finger and set the book down to stand up. She went over to the store’s safe and opened it, pulling out the register drawers, and made her way into the store. Setting one drawer by each register, she began counting the change in each, recording the quantities of each value of currency into the point-of-sale system. Once all the money was counted and the drawers were locked, she unlocked the front door.

Sunset walked over to the guitars, taking a teal Gibson Flying V off the rack and began strumming as she waited for customers to arrive.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Pinkie stepped off the bus and started walking toward her house. She stuck her key in the door and turned it, but it turned too easily. Pinkie suddenly became more alert and stepped into the front entryway of her house, quietly closing the door behind her as she pulled a machete out of a nearby hiding spot. She carefully made her way through the living room toward the kitchen, holding the machete in front of her but finding no intruder, and so she made her way up the staircase.

The door to her bedroom was closed, but Pinkie almost never closed her bedroom door when she wasn’t home, so she knew something was amiss. As she approached the door she heard a buzzing noise, much louder than the buzzing she usually heard since she could hear it from the second floor hallway.

“That can’t be good.”

She turned the doorknob to her room and opened it slightly. She touched the tip of the machete against the door and slowly pushed it open, and she gasped and stepped back when she saw what was inside.

In the corner where just that morning she had heard buzzing through the wall, there was now a large hole where someone had pulled off the drywall to reveal a sizeable hornet nest between the studs. Her bedroom had a swarm of hornets flying around, and now that the door was open, she would have to get into harm’s way in order to close it.

“Shit,” Pinkie whispered and stepped into the bathroom, where she got out her phone and called Sofia. “Come on, Sofia, pick up…”

“What’s up, Pinkie?” Sofia asked over the phone. “Did you forget something at the music store.”

“No, there’s a different kind of emergency,” Pinkie replied. “There are hornets in my bedroom.”

There was a pause. “Not that I don’t believe you, Pink, but I have to ask. Could they be hallucinations, like a side effect from the medication Doc gave you?”

“Nope. He said hallucinations weren’t a known symptom of my medication.”

“All right, so we’ll assume the hornets are real. Are they contained?”

“No, I had to open the door to see what was going on.” Pinkie peeked out of the bathroom door toward her bedroom, seeing some hornets exploring the part of the hallway in front of her bedroom. “And they’re escaping into the hallway.”

“Shit,” Sofia said. “You’re allergic, aren’t you?”

“Mhm. If I get too close they’ll attack me, and I don’t have an epinephrine autoinjector to counteract the venom in time.”

“Okay, get out of the house and we’ll send someone over to help.”

Pinkie saw the swarm spreading through the hallway. “Please hurry,” she said, and ended the call. She left the bathroom and hurried down the stairs again. Some hornets noticed her and followed her. She reached the door, turned the knob, and unsuccessfully tried to pull the door open. She pushed her foot against the doorframe and pulled as hard as she could, but again, she was unsuccessful.

“Ouch!” she cried out, feeling one of the hornets sting her and she slapped at it. She looked through a nearby window and saw a tall, muscular man outside holding the door closed. “Fuck, it was a trap!” Pinkie turned around to face the growing swarm, and then took her phone out again. She did her best to ignore the stings as she sent a simple text to Sofia:




IT’S A TRAP!!!




Pinkie dropped her phone and wielded the machete and swung it around, knowing she wouldn’t survive but determined to try to kill as many hornets as she could before her body succumbed to the venom.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


After seeing Diane’s text, Sunset put on her dual shoulder holster with a Makarov in one holster and a Walther PPK in the other, then jumped into her car and sped toward Pinkie’s house. She didn’t care if it was a trap, she had to go help Diane any way she could.

When she got to Diane’s house, Sunset stepped out of her car and hurried to the door. When she grabbed the door knob, she thought that it felt a little deformed. She put one hand under her jacket, wrapping her hand around one of the pistols, and looked around. She saw nobody.

Sunset looked through a nearby window and saw Diane’s body on the floor, unmoving and covered in a swarm of hornets.

“Shit, Pinkie.” Sunset rested her forehead against the window. “We just got you back.”
> 10: Scoprire Gli Altarini
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before she knew it, Sunset’s attention was piqued when she heard police sirens approaching.

“Shit,” she cursed, “how’d they get here so fast?”

Sunset took a cloth from her jacket pocket which she usually used to clean the lenses of her sunglasses, and wiped away the smudge her forehead had left against the glass. She knew any DNA evidence would still be there, but if the CSIs couldn’t see it they may not think to take a sample. She moved to wipe down the doorknob, then hesitated. As far as she knew, the doorknob had the only evidence on it regarding who was responsible for Diane’s death, and wiping away her own fingerprints would also wipe away theirs. She tucked the cloth back into the pocket and hurried back to her car.

She didn’t drive far, just far enough that her car wasn’t in the vicinity of Diane’s house and close enough that she could walk back, and popped the trunk. She took a carrying case containing one of the Rainbooms’ surveillance drones, closed the trunk, and locked the car before making her way back toward Diane’s house.

By the time she returned, a police cruiser and an ambulance had arrived on the scene. Sunset went down another street and after a few blocks turned back toward Diane’s. Diane’s residential neighborhood butted up against a commercial zone, and Sunset was now behind the brick wall of a warehouse, hidden from the prying eyes of any investigators who might otherwise notice her spying on them. She knelt down and opened the drone case, turning it on as she pulled it out. She put on a pair of VR goggles through which she would receive the live footage from the drone’s camera to help her steer, like a video game.

After a few minutes of flying the drone through the neighborhood, she found Diane’s house as a black van pulled up and a handful of crime scene investigators stepped out, including a woman whose platinum blonde hair and pink shades Sunset instantly recognized as a former German immigrant classmate from high school.

“And here I thought Freida Feinberg would become a professional photographer for, like, fashion shows or something,” Sunset chuckled to herself. “Though I suppose documenting crime scenes is a steadier paycheck in this city.”

Freida was directed to the front door of Diane’s house. She looked through the window and Sunset could see her mouth moving, but since she hadn’t been able to plant a listening device before she’d had to leave and the drone unable to have a microphone function due to the sound of the rotors, Sunset was unable to make out exactly what she was saying but zoomed in on the image anyway. Freida check to ensure the flash off and took a picture of Diane’s body through the window before turning toward the others on the scene and presumably saying something about the swarming hornets. She crouched in front of the door and looked at the knob. With a photographer’s trained eye for light and shadow, Sunset had little doubt she had noticed the deformations in the knob. She stepped away so another CSI could brush it for fingerprints. Freida took a picture, then the CSI lifted the prints.

“Good luck with those,” Sunset mumbled. She noticed one of the cops looking up at the sky. “Now what could you be doing?” The cop looked directly at the drone and reached for a pair of binoculars. “Oh, no you don’t,” Sunset declared as she backed the drone behind the chimney of someone else’s house and out of the cop’s eyesight and directed it sideways so she could see the scene from behind the cop car where it hopefully wouldn’t be noticed. When Sunset guided the drone back to a suitable vantage point, she saw that everyone was looking at the sky now, and began to fly the drone back to her.

“A bit too much heat than I’m willing to deal with right now,” she said. Soon she could see the warehouse she was hiding behind in her goggles, and when she saw herself in the video feed she removed the goggles and guided the drone back to her, grabbing it from the air and placing it back into the case. “Even if they don’t get a good print from me, the cops will probably find me or the other Rainbooms to tell us what happened. Freida knew we were close.”

Sunset closed the case and dialed Arianna’s number. She picked up the case and started walking back to her car as the phone rang.

“Yello,” she said.

“Dash, we’ve got a big problem.”

“Damn, another one?” Arianna asked. Sunset detected a hint of sarcasm. “What’s up?”

“Pinkie’s dead, stung by a swarm of hornets that had somehow gotten into her locked house.”

“Isn’t Pinkie deathly allergic?” she asked, then swore. “I promise the pun wasn’t intended.”

“Yup, she was, and I know it wasn’t.”

“Fuck, that’s a terrible way to go.”

“There’s more,” Sunset continued. “By the time I arrived at Pinkie’s house, her door was locked and someone had already called the cops. It wasn’t me, and it looked like no one else on the block was home.”

“So wait, that means someone was there making sure she stayed inside.”

“And that whoever called the cops was directly involved in her death. This is now the second incident and the third Rainboom who has died under supposedly accidental circumstances.”

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence.”

“And the third time, it’s enemy action,” Sunset said, completing the quote from Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger. “We’re being hunted.”


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


“That’s a bit severe, don’t you think?” Dash asked. When Sunset began to speak, she interrupted. “Rhetorical question. I’ll get someone to look into it.” With that, Dash ended the call and set her phone down. She drummed her fingers on her desk, wondering how to proceed.

Hearing high heels nearing her door, she looked up and saw Rarity passing by.

“Rarity, got a minute?”

“A tiny minute,” she replied. “I’ve got an appointment at the spa before a date tonight.”

“Great, come in and close the door behind you.”

Rarity nodded and stepped inside, closing the door behind her. “What do you need?”

“Sofia just found Pinkie dead in her house, and like with Snips and Snails she suspects foul play, so we’re gonna start figuring out who seems to be out to get us. Be on high alert for threats and start gathering whatever information you can. I’ll tell the others to do the same.”

Rarity sputtered. “Pinkie’s murdered? Why would you tell me that before my date? Now I’ll be upset the whole time!”

“It’s not a big deal,” Dash answered. “You’re going to the spa first, so it should be a piece of cake to process this there.” Dash stood up and opened the door for Rarity. Rarity turned to leave, and Dash put her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “I hate it as much as you do, but we’ve got to stay focused so we can figure this out.”

Rarity sighed. “I know,” Rarity sighed. “I’d better get going, or I’ll be late for my appointment, and that simply cannot happen!” A smile appeared on Rarity’s face, but even Dash could tell it was fake.

Dash followed Rarity out of her office and made her way across the hall to Twilight’s lab. She knocked on the door and, after a moment of silence, opened the unlocked door and made her way inside, where she was greeted with a synthesized bark.

“Oh, hey, S.P.I.K.E. Is Twilight around?” she asked. S.P.I.K.E. emitted a sound like a whimper, which Dash took to mean “no”. “All right, I’ll just text her then.”




Pinkie just died. Deets later. Sofia suspects foul play so keep your drones in the air




Dash hit send and as she was putting her phone in her pocket she heard a ding and looked up, discovering a pixelated image of a sealed envelope in S.P.I.K.E.’s eyes.

“Oh, come on!” she exclaimed. “She connects you to her phone but doesn’t give you the ability to speak? That’s bullshit.” S.P.I.K.E. let out an electronic bark. Dash turned to leave, then had an idea and turned back. “Did Twilight ever give you the ability to look through security footage or record everything we say in here?” S.P.I.K.E. tilted his head. “Imma take that as a ‘no’ then.” Dash took her phone back out of her pocket and sent Twilight more texts.




Also see if you can set up some extra security measures like programming spike to analyze surveillance footage






I just thanked a robot dog






It’s weird talking to him






You know that, right?




She put her phone away and started making her way to the stairs up to Felicity’s room, but paused on the first few steps. Did she really want to tell Felicity about Diane? It hadn’t been that long since Snips and Snails were found murdered in their apartment, and if Sunset’s theory was right, there was a chance Felicity would become more and more scared as more Rainbooms were hunted. If it was wrong – however unlikely that seemed – Dash didn’t want to scare Felicity any more than she almost certainly was.

On the other hand, she did seem to be growing more courageous as they continued to train together. Maybe she was finally breaking out of her shell.

“Nah,” she decided, “I should tell Flash first.”


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Rarity emitted a soft groan as Alice, one of the masseuses at the day spa, worked a knot out of her shoulder.

“You feel more tense zan usual, Miss Rachel,” she said.

Rarity thought for a moment about whether or not to give Alice some details about why. The only people who knew she was part of the Rainbooms were the other Rainbooms. Not even her parents or her little sister, who for many of her adolescent years wanted to be just like her big sister, knew.

“I received some very bad news today just before arriving here,” she replied. “Fortunately I was coming here anyway”

“Zen it’s a good ting you’re here, so you can process while you’re being pampered.”

“Indeed, darling,” Rarity said and settled into the rest of the massage, letting all her muscles relax so she could focus on thinking, as well as on Alice’s kneading hands.

About one week earlier, Sofia had informed all the Rainbooms that Snips and Snails had been discovered strangled in their apartment. There had been a gas leak, but they didn’t die from the carbon monoxide. Suspicious circumstances, which led to Sofia considering the possibility of a hit, and subsequently tightening security. Since then, some of Twilight’s tech had gone missing and reappeared a few days later, and just this morning Sofia had discovered that Pinkie had died gruesomely in her own home. No, that wasn’t right; Twilight’s computer chip had disappeared before Snips and Snails were discovered, but – according  to Doc’s autopsy – after they were murdered. Twilight was known to be so focused on her work that she could develop lapses in her memory, but she was absolutely certain that she hadn’t simply misplaced the chip, and given her robot pet’s scans for the chip had come up empty during the interim, Rarity dismissed the absent-minded theory. Dash unfortunately hadn’t given her any details about Pinkie’s death, but given that Sofia also suspected foul play with her demise, it was reasonable to assume her death was also not an accident.

She felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Miss Rachel?”

“Yes, Alice?”

“Oh good, you’re awake,” Alice said. “I thought I may haf put you to sleep.”

Clearly, Twilight wasn’t the only one to lose track of her surroundings when she got focused.

“Just deep in thought, Alice,” Rarity replied.

“It’s time for your face mask.”

Rarity smiled. “Lead the way, darling.”

Rarity closed her eyes so Alice could begin applying the face mask. There had to be something they were all missing, some piece of information that would definitively connect these events if indeed they were connected as the Rainbooms believed them to be.

“Is that a Rachel I heard next to me,” an effeminate male’s voice next to her said, “or is the face cream giving me hallucinations?”

Rachel lifted a cucumber slice and glanced next to her to see a well-groomed mustache poking out of the cream on his face. This was another of the spa’s regulars and someone with whom Rarity had become well-acquainted with over the last few years.

“Good heavens, Steven,” she said with a smile and replaced the cucumber over her eye. “It feels like it’s been ages, darling.”

“Oh, I know, I know!” he chuckled. “What are you doing here today? I thought your appointments were always on Tuesdays.”

“Special occasion, darling,” she replied. “I’ve got a date tonight, and I simply must look my best.”

“Oh, don’t be so modest. You’re always fabulous!”

“Hm. True.”

They laid in silence for a moment before Steven’s voice broke in again.

“Is everything okay?” he asked. “We don’t usually have moments of silence while chatting.”

Rarity sighed. “Problem at work. We’ve run into some issues recently, and though we think they might be connected, we can’t figure out how.”

“Would you like to tell me, or is this a trade secret kind of thing?”

Rarity smirked. Mafia lieutenants being murdered definitely qualified as a trade secret.

“I can’t discuss details, but the first issue was discovered a week ago, and we’ve had two more incidents since. One of them was just this morning.”

“Three incidents in one week is a lot to deal with.”

“Indeed. We learned the first incident actually happened a few days prior to its discovery.”

“If I may ask – and feel free to say nothing if it’s confidential – did something happen before the first incident that might have led to it?”

Rarity gently shook her head so she wouldn’t disturb her facial. “No, it’s just been business as usual. Actually, that’s not quite true,” she added, remembering that one of the gang’s missions, a mission she had been on with Dash, had resulted in a level of protection they’d never given before. “There was something different that seemed normal at the time. I’ll have to look into that. Merci, Monsieur Magnet.”

“De rien, mon ami.”

With a new idea of how to proceed, Rarity soon found that it was easier to relax. She thought back on all she knew about Felicity, and as she made her way to the hot tub to soak, she began thinking of questions to ask Dash about Felicity and their history together. She settled into the warm, bubbling water, and closed her eyes, barely registering a spa employee behind her asking if she wanted a hot towel while she soaked.

“Yes, please.”

The hot, moist towel was draped over her face, and Rarity noticed a sweet smell from the fabric, assuming it was a new solution of scents the spa was using. However, about twenty seconds later, she felt herself getting drowsy and inhaled again. Her eyes shot open, recognizing the scent of chloroform, and tried to bring her hands up to remove the towel, but hands on either side of her grabbed her arms and held them back in the water. Another pair of hands pulled the towel taut over her face, and despite struggling, soon she’d succumbed to the chloroform’s effects and went unconscious .


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Trevor Hood sat at the table at the steakhouse he and Rachel had reserved for the night, waiting. Trevor still didn’t know much about his date, but he knew she was punctual, and when she was going to be late by even a minute, she’d send a text. It was now 7:02, and he still hadn’t received a text when a waiter approached his table.

“Are you still waiting on your plus one, sir?” he asked.

“Yes,” Trevor replied after a moment of thought, “but something’s probably keeping her busy, so I’m not sure if she’ll be able to come.”

“Would you still like to order for yourself, then, sir?”

“Ribeye, medium.”

“And for a side, sir?”

“Veggies. Can I get it to go?”

“Of course, sir. I’ll bring your meal out in a takeout container.”

Trevor thanked the waiter and handed him his credit card. He leaned forward on the table and stroked his goatee, thinking. He knew where Rachel lived and worked, as he’d picked her up or dropped her off at both locations on previous dates. Her house was farther from the steakhouse than the music store, and the music store had the added benefit of almost always having other employees who might know where she’d gone.

Soon the waiter returned with his check and a Styrofoam takeout container. Trevor fished some bills from his wallet and gave them to the waiter as he thanked him before turning away to leave the restaurant. He took out his phone to check directions to the music store, finding it wasn’t too far from the steakhouse, so he decided to walk.

Along the way he passed a disheveled man with mismatched clothes sitting in an alley against a building. He looked at the takeout container and decided he wasn’t hungry enough for steak tonight, so he gave it to the man.

“Steak dinner. Bon appétit.”

If the homeless man thanked him, Trevor wasn’t listening as he continued on his way. Soon, he approached the music store and walked in.

“Welcome to the Rainbooms,” an auburn-haired woman behind the counter said. “How can I help you?”

“I’m not here for music, actually,” Trevor replied. “Rachel works here, right?”

“Yes, but she has a date tonight.” the woman answered, then looked at Trevor for a moment and a look of realization spread across her face. “Wait, don’t tell me she didn’t show up.”

He shook his head. “Normally she’d send a text if she was going to be late, but I haven’t got anything.”

“That’s weird. She was really looking forward to this date. She even booked an appointment at the spa this afternoon. Here,” she said, passing him a pen and a piece of paper, “write down your name and number. I’ll do some digging and give you a call if I find anything out.”

Trevor thanked her and wrote down his number, then left the building to make his way back toward the steakhouse to get his car.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Sunset held up the piece of paper with Trevor’s phone number on it, staring through it. After some time she went through the employee door and knocked on the door to Arianna’s office before opening it and making her way inside.

“What’s up, Sunset?”

“The day just got a whole lot worse,” she answered. “Rarity’s missing. She never showed up for her date with Trevor.”

“Fuck. Any chance she’s following a lead and lost track of time?”

“Nope.”

Arianna groaned, rubbing her forehead. “How is increasing security not doing anything?”

“If I had to guess, our alleged mole expected us to increase security and has working around it the whole time. Worst case scenario, it’s just a matter of time before all of us end up dead or missing.” Sunset sighed and closed her eyes. She didn’t want her oldest friend to see her eyes starting to tear up, but still allowed herself some vulnerability. “I know I don’t show it, Ari, but for the first time in a very long time... I think I’m afraid.”

“Maybe we should set up a meeting with Octavia,” Arianna replied. “As much as we want to replace them, we can’t do it if we’re dead. We should ask for some help protecting ourselves.”

Sunset groaned. “I hate that idea. We’d owe them bigtime, and I don’t want that kind of threat looming over us, but I also hate that you’re completely right. We can’t do this on our own. I’ll set up a meeting, and I want both you and Phil to be there this time.”

“What about Jackie? She’s the strongest of any of us?”

Sunset shook her head. “Someone still needs to run the store and protect Felicity while we’re gone.”

“Felicity’s gotten really good at self-defense.”

“Even so, I’d feel better if she had an experienced fighter with her. I’ll let you know when the meeting is,” she said and walked across the hall into her own office.
> 11: Una Calma Prima Della Tempesta
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rachel opened her eyes to darkness and a dull ache in one of her shoulders. She tried to move her arm to rub at her shoulder, but discovered that she couldn’t move at all. After squirming a bit, moving as little as she was able, she determined she’d been blindfolded and tied to a chair.

“This is definitely not the spa treatment I paid for,” she complained. She waited for a response, but after a few seconds no one did. “You could’ve at least wrapped me in a robe before tying me up. It’s cold here.” Wherever “here” is, that is.

“Get used to it,” said a gruff voice.

Rachel allowed herself a sly smile, subtle enough that you’d have to be looking directly at her mouth in order to see how little the corners of her lips turned up. Oh good, a man, she thought. I might be able to charm him into letting me go free.

“Oh, thank goodness, another human being,” she exclaimed in a relieved tone. “Did they kidnap you too?”

“No.”

Rachel waited a moment to see if he would continue, but he said nothing more. If he’s not a victim, he’s either with the kidnapper or is the kidnapper as I suspected. “Do you know where we are?”

“Yeah.” 

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me?”

“No.” Rachel huffed. Short answers were not what she fishing for… but perhaps she could figure out some clues with her senses.

Rachel moved her body to feel where the ropes were around her body and get a sense of how much range of motion she actually had. Ropes had been wrapped around her torso several times, and her hands had been tied behind the back of the chair. If she’d been clothed, she would’ve been able to reach a stiletto knife she kept hidden in her belt.

Damn it all! she thought. Despite knowing that someone’s been targeting us, I still let my guard down..

Adjusting her legs, she found that they’d only been bound just below the knees, leaving her lower legs and feet free to move. She rubbed her feet against the chair – plastic – and against the cold floor below. Too cold to be linoleum, too smooth to be stone, not nearly smooth enough to be tile, nor did she feel her toes rub against any grout lines That suggested a concrete floor of an industrial building, one with a need for practical flooring instead of something more aesthetic, and one with a terrible lack of any interior design whatsoever.

She leaned her head back and took a slow, deep breath through her nose. The most prominent scent was of staleness, dust that had been collecting for months, or perhaps years. It was a smell she’d remembered from various missions which brought her to some of the more abandoned areas of the city, horrid places that she’d suggested a few times to Sofia to let the Rainbooms buy these lots and fix them up, but alas, urban renewal had always been a lower priority for their leader. So she was in an abandoned warehouse, or at the very least, one that had been sitting unused for some time.

She turned her head and coughed into her shoulder. “Can you please cover me with something? It hasn’t gotten any warmer.”

“Would it get you to stop whining?” her captor asked. Rachel thought she detected a hint of annoyance in his voice.

“Technically I’m complaining, not whining,” she replied, “but yes, darling. For a while, anyway, as this is not the spa experience I paid for.”

Rachel heard the man’s heavy footsteps walking away – steel-toed boots, perhaps – and a door open to her left. His footsteps faded away as he looked for a blanket or something. She pulled her right leg as close to the chair as she could and pushed the other as far forward as she could, stretching the rope out as little as she could. She was grateful her thighs hadn’t been bound as she wiggled her right leg higher with some difficulty. When she couldn’t raise her right leg any more she lifted her other leg and felt the rope shift. Her movements may always be graceful befitting a lady such as herself, but she was certainly not as agile as Diane could be from time to time. Used to be, she reminded herself.

She heard the man’s footsteps returning, so she quickly put her legs back down. As she’d hoped, the rope slid down closer to her ankles. She’d have to keep working at it later and hope that her captor didn’t notice the change.

Rachel heard a crinkling noise as the man got closer, then more crinkling above her before feeling cold, stiff plastic covering her body. It was a tarp.

“This is all I could find.”

Rachel sighed.

“Well, thank you anyway,” she said. “At least it’ll cover my indecency.”

“You talk too much!” the man said, his voice raised.

Rachel stopped talking, but not because she was afraid of getting hurt for continuing to talk. No, she’d gone silent because she suddenly recognized his voice as of one of the spa workers. She didn’t usually deal with his services, but she could sometimes hear his loud voice through the walls as he made enthusiastic exclamations to his patrons. His large bodybuilder physique made him easily recognizable.

“Bruno?” she asked, her voice welling up with fear.

Bruno stuck a cloth in her mouth and tied it tight, silencing her.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


The next few days passed with no further incidents, and while that would normally give Sunset the opportunity to relax and plan future missions, most of her energy was spent trying to find where Rachel had gone, and when that produced no results, distracted herself with assisting customers and dealing with her usual managerial duties in the music store. The distraction worked, as she found she’d lost track of time when Arianna and Phillip approached her.

“We should go, Sofia,” Phillip said, “even though we know Octavia’s going to be late anyway.” He smirked. “Ten bucks says she’s only eleven minutes late this time.”

“Not in the mood today, Flash,” Sunset stated. Phillip nodded.

“I already told Jackie she’s in charge of the store,” Arianna said, “so don’t delay. When was the last time you had some fresh air?”

“Fresh air in this city?” Sunset asked, not expecting an answer. Neither of her associates did, but simply looked at each other and shrugged. Sunset suddenly reminisced on how crisp and clean the air in Equestria had always been, and how disappointed she’d been when she learned that the air in human cities was never nearly as pure. “The day Diane died and Rachel disappeared. I haven’t been able to focus since.”

The three walked out to Phillip’s car and stepped inside, Sunset in the passenger seat and Arianna in the back seat. They drove in silence so Sunset could focus on the topics they’d be discussing at the meeting with Octavia, and soon were parked in the café’s parking lot.

Sunset, Arianna, and Phillip sat in silence at the usual patio table where Octavia and Sunset always held their lunch meetings. It was the first day Octavia had told Sunset she’d be available to meet, and while Sunset hadn’t liked the idea of waiting while Rachel was still missing in action, she had little choice but to agree and keep the Rainbooms vigilant in the meantime.

She took a few deep breaths, taking in the afternoon air, and found herself able to calm her nerves. She wasn’t sure if it was reminiscing about Equestria’s air quality, breathing in the relatively fresh air she’d gotten accustomed to, or having her two best underbosses next to her that calmed her.

Probably some combination of the three, she concluded.

Eleven minutes after the agreed-upon time, Octavia’s car drove around the corner. Arianna passed Flash a ten-dollar bill behind Sunset’s back, which he took without saying a word before all three stood up.

Octavia looked at the three Rainbooms as she approached, and greeted them. “If I had known you were bringing both of your best associates, Sofia, I would have brought another of my own.”

Sunset shook her head. “They’re not just here for my protection,” she replied. “Given what’s been happening, it’s for their own protection as well.”

“That’s either paranoia or wisdom,” Octavia said.

“It’s about half of each.”

“In all the years I’ve known you, Sofia, I’ve never known you to become flustered like this,” Octavia said as a waiter approached their table. “Tell me what’s been going on since we last met.”

It didn’t take very long for Sunset to explain everything that had happened since their last meeting, as well as to mention some new details concerning old business from the previous couple weeks.

“With four separate incidents or attacks on our associates in the last two weeks, and two of them on the same day, I need...” Don’t say it, don’t say it! “I need to ask a favor.” Fuck, I said it. No going back now.

Octavia nodded. “Anything for my oldest friends,” she replied. “What do you need?”

“We need protection,” Arianna blurted out. Sunset gave her a look. Arianna looked back and shrugged before turning back toward Octavia. “We think someone’s been targeting us. First Snips and Snails are found dead under suspicious circumstances, then some of Twilight’s tech disappears and reappears, and a few days ago Pinkie died and Rarity’s gone AWOL. We’ve beefed up security a ton since Snips and Snails, but it hasn’t seemed to have any effect whatsoever.”

“Hmm.” Octavia sat in thought for a moment, her hands clasped on the table. Sunset knew Octavia well enough to know that she was likely thinking about some complications regarding the Melodias protecting a rival famiglia. “As my oldest and most trusted friend, it’s the least I could do, though I may have to pull a few strings.”

“Thank you,” Sunset replied. “That shouldn’t be too difficult for you, mia amica. After all, you are your father’s daughter. You’ve got plenty of influence.”

“Indeed.”


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


S.P.I.K.E. let out an electronic bark, causing Esperanza to look up from the electronics she was soldering.

“What is it, S.P.I.K.E.?” There were yellow caution signs in the dog’s eyes. “Oh good, the security update for the drones is ready.”

She turned back to her computer and pulled up the program for the security update. She placed a USB in the port and began uploading the program. An error message popped up on the screen. Esperanza clicked on it and was relieved it wasn’t for the security update, but her relief faded as a program told her there was a malfunctioning drone in the storage warehouse.

“That’s strange,” she mumbled. “None of the drones in the storage warehouse should be active at all. Why’s one of them malfunctioning?”

She began typing at her computer, but with each command she entered she was greeted with an error message.

“Okay, that’s definitely a problem. I’m going to have to go there and fix it manually.” S.P.I.K.E. barked again. “Don’t worry, S.P.I.K.E., this is a good thing. I can add the security update while I check on the malfunctioning drone.”

S.P.I.K.E. let out a mechanical wine, and Esperanza reached down to pet his head while she waited for the program to transfer onto the USB. Once it was finally done, she safely removed the flash drive and tucked it into her pocket as she stood up to leave. Esperanza was just about to close the door behind her when S.P.I.K.E. barked again.

“What now?” S.P.I.K.E. tilted his head and she looked beside the table where she kept her taser and extra cartridges. “Oh, thanks, S.P.I.K.E. I definitely don’t want to forget that, what with all that’s been happening recently.” She picked up the taser and cartridges and closed the door to her lab behind her. She walked into the store and paused as she passed Jacqueline at the cash register.

“Applejack, I’m heading to the storage warehouse to install a security update on the drones,” she said.

“Alone?”

“It’s the middle of the day, so I should be fine,” Esperanza replied. “Plus I’ve got my taser in case someone does attack me.”

“That ain’t what I’m concerned about,” Jacqueline sighed. “Pinkie’s dead, Rarity’s missin’, and Sofia, Flash, and Dash just left to meet with Octavia right now. All our best associates are gone except fer us, and I’m in charge of the store right now so I can’t come with you. It’s really not a good time to go off alone.”

Esperanza looked around the empty store. “You can’t lock up for an hour?”

“I’d rather not. The music store is still our only legitimate source of income, and I’d really prefer not risking an audit any time soon just because we’re closed at unusual hours. Were there any other associates in the back?”

“I didn’t see any.”

“And the security update can’t wait?” Jacqueline asked, her concern growing.

Esperanza shook her head. “It’s best if I do it right away so whoever’s attacking us can’t hack into my programming. Which shouldn’t be possible at all unless they’ve got a really good programmer, but there’s never anything wrong with having better security, right?”

Jacqueline sighed. “All right, go on then. Just… be extra careful. Please.”

Esperanza nodded and left the building, making her way to her car nearby. It wasn’t a fancy car, but it ran well. She sat in the driver’s seat and set her taser in the passenger seat before pulling out of the lot and driving toward the warehouse.

The drive was quiet except for the radio, which played the local classical station. Classical music, as well as other genres without lyrics, always helped her focus on the task at hand, whether it was soldering resistors to a motherboard, writing hundreds of lines of code, or paying attention to the other drivers on the road. She arrived at the warehouse as the station had just finished playing Gerald Finzi’s Intrada from his cantata Dies Natalis, a piece that was both somber and hopeful, both calm and tense. It was the kind of musical complexity she loved and could never achieve herself.

Esperanza unlocked the door and walked into the dark storage warehouse, lit only by the emergency lights. She turned on the lights, locked the door behind her, and walked to the primary control console, pulling the USB with the security update out of her pocket.

“Wait, I won’t have to run the update twice if I fix the malfunctioning drone first.” She set the flash drive down and pulled up a schematic to find which drone was malfunctioning.

“03-02-C-06.”

Esperanza repeated the location as she walked to it to keep it fresh in her short-term memory. Once she arrived at the location, she disconnected the malfunctioning drone and brought it back to the control console, plugged in a cable, and ran a diagnostic program. She brewed some tea while she waited for the program to finish.

“A GPS error?” she said once it had run its course. “That’s easy enough to fix.” She held down the drone’s power button until it turned back on, running its startup. She ran the diagnostic again and found no errors. “Perfect.”

She placed the newly repaired drone back in its location and finally ran the security update.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Jacqueline looked up from her phone as the bell above the door rang to see Sofia, Flash, and Dash entering the music store.

“Workin’ hard or hardly workin’?” Dash asked.

“Hardly workin’,” she responded. “No one’s come in today.”

“Well, that’s business,” stated Sofia as she walked back to her office. Jacqueline watched her as she passed.

“What’s up with her?”

“Oh, you know,” Flash replied with a shrug, “Diane dead, Rachel missing, the meeting was helpful but not immediately productive. Is Esperanza still in her lab?”

“Don’t tell Sofia,” Jacqueline said, “but she went to install a security update to the drones alone. I tried tellin’ her not to, but she figured updating them as soon as possible would be best given what’s been going on.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much a lose-lose,” Dash said. “Any idea when she’ll be back?”

“Not a clue. You’d have better luck askin’ her robo-dog.”

“Or we could just text her,” Flash said, taking out his phone and sending her a message.

“Oh, yeah. That too,” Dash said. She leaned on the counter in front of Jacqueline. “What are the chances she responds quickly?”

“It’s Twilight,” Jacqueline stated flatly.

“Yeah, I know, but still.”

“I doubt there’s much to distract her at the storage warehouse,” Flash said. “Not like here, where she’s constantly super focused on making her tech.” Flash’s phone buzzed. “‘I shouldn’t be longer than a half hour or so. The security update is 69% complete.’”

“Heh, nice.” Jacqueline slapped Dash upside the head. “Ow!”

“I’m gonna head to the back,” Flash said, making his way to the back of the store. “See if Sofia needs anything.”

“Feels weird,” Dash said once it was just her and Jacqueline in the store.

“What does?”

“After all the tension the last few weeks and plenty of opportunities for bad things to happen today, nothing did.”

Jacqueline thought for a moment. Dash was right. Rarity was still missing and they still had no leads, Twilight had taken some risks but she was still safe, and half of the gang’s leaders had been away from the music store most of the day and no one had attacked them.

“You don’t think whoever’s been targeting us has given up, do you?” she asked.

“Nah, the opposite,” Dash replied. “I’ve got a bad feeling that whoever’s been targeting us has given us some time to let down our guard.”

Silence fell over the two young women. Both of them were thinking the same thing, but neither wanted to be the first to say it: something very bad was coming, and they had no idea when or how it would happen.