Flitter disliked the Element-Bearers, but it was nothing personal. Flitter disliked just about everypony in the world, everything under Sun and Moon, the Princesses who made those last two work at all, and a universe which required them to do the job because the stupid orbs wouldn't operate on their own. Disliking the Bearers just naturally fell into the first two categories. Flitter had dislike, disdain, and contempt for just about everything that existed -- but never hatred. All of the first three emotions were casual things, the logical reaction of just about the only pony in the world who could think to the inherent stupidity of everything around her. Hatred -- well, she'd once overheard somepony saying something unbelievably stupid: that hate was love with its back turned. And the idiocy of those words was self-apparent for anypony who could think about them -- in other words, usually just her -- but it still seemed to Flitter that hate required a level of emotional and temporal commitment that she didn't care enough to give, especially since it would keep her from doing her job. And Flitter loved her job.
Most ponies thought they knew what Flitter's job was: just another part of Ponyville's weather team. Naturally, those ponies were stupid. It was what she did to get the bits which were so stupidly vital for continued comfortable existence, but it wasn't work. That came when she did what she loved, and weather manipulation wasn't it. Flitter's work came after her job hours ended, and she loved it so much as to spend nearly every free waking moment at it because she was more vital to Equestria than any mere cold front breaker could ever be. The pitiful universe demanded that Flitter work as much as she possibly could and furthermore, deserved it. And so she went around at all hours making sure everypony around her got to have The Flitter Experience.
Some of the ponies who had gone through The Flitter Experience believed Flitter's true occupation was Professional Bitch. Several had said it to her face. Flitter felt there had to be a better way to put it, especially since just about anything anypony else came up with was automatically stupid, and what she'd come up with after some thought was Professional Jolter. It was how she justified her mark. What did dragonflies do? They startled ponies. They came out of nowhere and made everypony jump -- well, everypony except her. Dragonflies took an ordinary day and disrupted it. They threw ponies out of their natural complacency. And that was Flitter's job.
A typical day at work for Flitter might start at the town market, where she would carefully cut in front of everypony possible to demonstrate just how weak-willed they were for letting her do it at all: that way, they might grow the spine required to make her stop. Then she would make snide remarks on appearance well within earshot of her targets because if somepony didn't tell you how stupid you looked, then wouldn't you just keep right on looking that way? Attendance at performances, now that was a necessary part of the schedule. Call off every slip in meter for a poem, every poor word choice within a story, and openly razz each false note to appear within music. Go ahead, applaud what was so clearly a substandard performance, let the artist believe they had skill. It just gave them the false confidence to keep screwing up. Flitter would only consider stomping her hooves for perfection, and that would never exist unless she helped.
Just about everypony in existence -- past, present and unless Flitter personally did something about it, future -- was so unbearably pointless. Farmers thought they were necessary because Equestria would starve without them? That was just stupid: there was food in the wild zones for those with the courage to bring it out. (Not that Flitter ever did: her job took up most of her time -- but the idea was right.) Weather needed to be controlled? Ponies were just too used to being comfortable -- and comfort was a fog cloud around the brain that kept ponies from seeing the fundamental stupidity of the world. If Flitter made ponies uncomfortable by saying obvious things, the stuff which was so visible to her and hidden within the fog for everypony else, then maybe she could clear the vapor and make them think. Flitter was rude and nasty and unkind and there were days when Professional Bitch was the least of it just because if she didn't do it, nopony else would and those poor idiots would be lost in chill self-blindness for all of their still-pointless lives.
And given that... the Element-Bearers were vital to Equestria's safety? Ponyville was lucky to have them in residence? Please. Not only had the continent gotten along perfectly well for a thousand years or so without them (and frankly, how the realm had survived so long without Flitter present to get it in order was the greater mystery), they were disaster magnets: the proof was in the constant town reconstruction.
(Admittedly, Flitter didn't mind that last part so much because nearly all of the disasters impacted the ground and left her place untouched, so the seemingly-perpetual flow of weirdness was mostly good for giving her material to work with, plus it kept things from being boring. Flitter often found life in a given settled zone boring, which was part of why she kept changing residences and certainly the fact that she always seemed to reach a point where no merchants would sell anything except moving supplies to her had nothing to do with it.)
But the Bearers themselves...
Twilight Sparkle? All that power and she never did anything with it, at least nothing real: the spells she researched were frivolous, things which would never make a true difference to anypony. Changing apples into oranges? Growing mustaches? What good did any of it do? If Flitter had possessed that kind of magic at that level of strength, she would have been kicking rears and changing names. Twilight Sparkle was the world's biggest nerd holding the world's biggest sledgehammer, which meant all she ever did with it was gently tap books back into their exact place on the world's most over-organized shelves.
Rainbow Dash? Not just an egotistical braggart who didn't so much need to be taken down a peg as driven out of the sky and through the ground until she reached places the Diamond Dogs wouldn't go, but a pony who thought she was 'cool' and 'awesome' and 'radical' and therefore was one of the stupidest ponies in the world in no small part just because she still felt those three words meant something. Which they didn't because if they did, Flitter would have been openly using them.
Applejack? Some Element Of Honesty. Flitter was more honest than anypony she knew. Brutal honesty counted, didn't it? By all rights, Flitter should have had that Element, not some lasso-toting hick wearing a stallion's hat and speaking in an accent her family should have lost generations ago.
Rarity? Speaking of stupid accents... A completely pointless pony working in the world's stupidest profession. Go ahead and make dresses in a town where most of the residents spent all their time covered by nothing more than their coats, see how that works out for you. (Flitter wore a bow in her mane because doing so was so nightmarishly unfashionable as to be a fashion in itself.) Not to mention her total failure to understand that being seventeen moons, seventeen endless moons older than Flitter meant the unicorn might as well be deceased, the way her views had frozen along with her inability to see her own pointlessness and trying to keep up with the changing tides of fashion wasn't a sign of a mind which could progress, it was a drowning swimmer splashing at waves and pretending sinking would never happen.
Pinkie Pie -- was -- well, she was sort of the best of them. Pinkie held a rare status in Flitter's world: that of a pony she didn't really mind, because Pinkie shook ponies up. Outside of yet another crisis being pulled into town by the positive poles of the gathered Elements, just about nothing could disrupt complacent pony existence like Pinkie appearing out of bucking nowhere and doing her Laughter thing, which largely seemed to mean bringing in as much chaos as anypony could reasonably conjure. Sometimes ponies laughed just because they couldn't think of any other way to react. Pinkie didn't see existence as fundamentally pointless, but inherently silly, and there were days when Flitter was willing to say "Meh, close enough." Besides, Pinkie had -- welcomed her to town. With a party. Most ponies only threw parties when Flitter left, and she'd found the last one, that stupid bucking display which included the fireworks spelling out her name along with the words Good Riddance, to be a little over the top. So Pinkie, while she was still a hyperactive self-deluding bundle of randomness with no purpose, direction, or ability to see that her so-called party skills were outdated by about a hundred and twenty moons at least, was sort of almost tolerable. But one out of six still sucked.
As for that sixth...
...Flitter didn't really hate anypony. Hatred was too much work. But if she somehow could have been bothered to care that much, she would have truly hated Fluttershy. Because Fluttershy was the weakest pony in the world.
It wasn't just Fluttershy's horrible flying (and how bad did you have to be before pegasi would praise you for having a wingpower of 2.3? Starting at 0.5 apparently did the trick), talent so miniscule that it should have outright disqualified her from her own species. It wasn't only the fact that even though the animal caretaker was physically stunning, the sort of beauty you got on the older quality of stupid paintings, she never did anything with it. If Flitter had possessed those kinds of looks, she would have been running the town just based on casual flickers of eyelashes. Fluttershy responded to ponies being attracted to her with a blush, cower, unsuccessful attempts to hide behind her own mane and inevitably, full retreat, sometimes even remembering to consider flying away, not that she really could. Fluttershy lived on the ground and while that certainly wasn't the complacent sky existence of most pegasi, it was just one more bit of strangeness added to the towering pile, the one which reached the willfully abandoned clouds. And animal caretaking --
-- yes, it was a stupid talent for a pegasus. It was something else which should have had Fluttershy stripped of the wings she could barely be bothered to use. But it also should have been incredible. It should have been -- and Dash would never hear Flitter think the word -- awesome. Because Fluttershy could command carnivores. She could make meat-eaters do what she wanted. Fluttershy could shake up everypony on the continent just by walking through town with some of her bigger friends at her side --
-- but she kept them around her cottage. Secluded. Out of sight. Because she didn't want to scare anypony. Because the most frightening thing in her world would have been calling any kind of attention to herself when her entire existence was already a two hundred decibel shout of 'I'm a total freak!' and if she'd had any courage at all, she would have been throwing that in pony faces instead of forever trying to hide her own.
Oh, Flitter had cheered Fluttershy at the end of the water transfer operation, or at least pretended to: she hadn't been in town that long and just making the mouth movements with the rest of the group... well, somehow, it hadn't seemed like an appropriate time to point out that "can really fly" didn't truly apply. But faking temporary acceptance with the rest of the crowd -- a ruse Fluttershy had seen through, looking directly at her from the middle of the assemblage -- didn't change a very basic fact:
Fluttershy was Kindness. And kindness was what you did when you were weak. It was the art of tucking yourself into a ball and crying 'I'll be nice to you if you just don't hurt me'. The only thing Flitter disliked more than complacent stupidity was weakness.
Fluttershy was the Element of Kindness -- and it made her the weakest pony in the world.
There were things Flitter liked, of course. And there were even a few which she loved.
Cloudchaser... well, kind of a scatterbrain sometimes, but when they were on the same page, two could jolt more easily than one. Sure, they didn't have exactly the same view of the very dumb universe, but they had enough things in common to let them get along and then some.
Flying -- you couldn't be a pegasus and not love flying, which was yet another reason Flitter felt stupid Kindness wasn't a real part of the species. Flitter just tried not to love it too openly, for that way lay Rainbow Dash and everypony could see how idiotically that worked out. (She didn't think about the sonic rainboom too much. Flitter couldn't do it and therefore, why should anypony?)
And then there was Carnie.
Before she'd reunited with Cloudchaser, when she was still on the move from town to town (and actually, Flitter considered herself to still be in that state with Ponyville as her latest temporary stop: it had lasted longer than most, but some things were just inevitable), she had been -- well, not lonely. Sure, just about everypony in the world was too locked into themselves to be friends with. She could get dates, but having them hang around past the first three minutes was a perpetual and incomprehensible problem: shouldn't anypony want to know how to best change themselves if they wanted to win her? But she was perfectly content with her own company, especially since that meant she wasn't hanging around somepony stupid. It was just that -- nights on the road were cold and a living heat engine was practical. That was all.
So she'd gotten a cat.
Cats were cool (and there was another word she could think, but not say). Cats stalked. They hunted -- and when they found something, they killed. In some ways, there was almost nothing which could jolt herbivores out of complacency like having to be around something that took its meals from things which wouldn't grow back. A creature that ended lives to keep its own going. Most ponies were at least a little uncomfortable around even the pet-classified animals which needed meat to live, and it was one of the many reasons relationships with the Griffon Republic tended to be at least mildly strained.
The loyalty of dogs -- which Flitter saw as mindless obedience from creatures just a little dumber than their owners -- canceled out most of the lingering unease. Cats, however... willful hunters who did it right in front of everypony and then proudly presented their companions with the results -- cats bothered ponies. Deliberate ownership of a cat was the one and only interesting thing about Rarity, even if she'd tried to turn her own furious frustrated killer into a non-fashionable fluffball who, to the cat's credit, still tried to do as much damage as it could to everything around it, and Flitter had occasionally wondered just how many customers walked away from the designer's shop after seeing what was sitting in the window -- and given that, why the unicorn kept the cat around at all. One strange part of an otherwise totally uninteresting non-personality.
(There had been a single moment, upon learning that a certain pony in town kept a pet alligator, when Flitter had briefly considered that she might be sharing a settled zone with the most interesting pony in the history of ever. And then she'd gotten a look at Gummy's total lack of teeth.)
Carnie was a lot of things. For starters, she was horrifically expensive. Pet food containing meat was, ounce for ounce, one of the most expensive substances in Equestria. And Flitter generally couldn't let Carnie do her own hunting -- at least not outside special excursions made with just that in mind -- because of another expense. Flitter had refused to accept permanent banishment to the ground just to have a cat -- and the only other option had been a permanent cloudwalking spell. She'd wound up traveling nearly two dozen gallops in order to find the one unicorn who could make it work, paid over hundreds of bits to make it happen, been told it was only possible because of Carnie's low body mass (a detail she frankly hadn't cared about), and one very long bout of purple glow later, she'd had a cat who could stalk across vapor just as easily as land. Training her not to go off the edges -- that had been scary, but it had worked. There just wasn't much to hunt in Flitter's vapor home: any birds who flew in could get away too easily. But cats needed to stalk -- so there had been another round of training, and Carnie had learned that when Flitter brought her down to ground level and said "Prowl," she could go find her own dinner as long as she didn't stray too far and came back when she was called. Carnie often brought Flitter little gifts when she returned -- tiny no-longer-wriggling gifts -- and Flitter was always careful to praise her before offering it back while saying she just wasn't hungry right then. Flitter could admire the skill involved in the hunt and nearly everything else that came with it, but she was still a pony and lunching on the results wasn't even going to happen on a bet.
Carnie was a tortoiseshell cat (and the irony of what Dash had was not lost on Flitter, nor was the inherent stupidity). She was just under sixty moons old. She was burnt orange and black with attentive green eyes. She had the longest tail proportionate to her body length Flitter had seen on anything outside a squirrel. She was leash-trained and could be walked around town: on good days, they would come across some number of the so-called Flower Trio and make them half-swoon from stress. She had claws which only came out when there was a real reason to unsheathe them. She was warm and soft and kept herself so clean that Flitter could stick her snout right into the fur and never smell blood at all.
Carnie came to her on days when work had exhausted her, rubbed up against her legs, then jumped onto Flitter's back before curling up into a purring circle of comfort. Carnie slept by her side. Carnie walked proudly at the end of her leash and play-swiped at anything Flitter gave a certain nod to. Sometimes the cat would try, with limited success, to wash Flitter, including the wings, and it was hard not to giggle at the strange sensation of sandpaper on feathers. When they had traveled through the wild zones together, Carnie hissed at anything which came out at them and then did her best to fight it off no matter how big or angry it was.
Carnie loved Flitter.
There had been days when her cat was the only living thing in the world which did.
They were walking through Ponyville together, mostly just to see how many ponies would be visibly trying not to faint at the sight.
Flitter had one end of the leash around Carnie's rib cage (because you never leashed the neck, a hard pull could do real damage, and Flitter lectured anypony she caught doing it that way) with the other around her own left front ankle. Carnie kept the length expertly taut as she proudly paraded in front of her pony master, overlong tail majestically swaying with pride.
"Why do you do that?" asked a familiar half-trembling voice. "Don't you have any shame?"
Flitter grinned to herself, then wiped the expression as she turned to face the earth pony. "It's a public street, Roseluck," she sneered. "I can walk down it all I like, and I can bring my cat with me. I don't have to worry about whether you like cats as long as I do. Why should your being afraid of cats be my problem?"
"If you cared at all about how ponies -- react..." Roseluck tried.
Flitter rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. I've been hearing more stories about you and your friends. It's the same reaction to everything. Parasprites: faint. Ursa Minor: swoon. Eclipse: run into the home of your collective choice and then collapse. You do all seem to reserve your best fall-downs for bunny stampedes... You should be thanking me."
Roseluck took several quick breaths, none of which seemed to be giving her enough oxygen to stay fully upright with. "Thanking you? Why?"
"Because maybe if you get to the point where you can see a cat without nearly passing out, you might be able to go outside, face sunrise, and not wait for the world to explode," Flitter nearly laughed. "Get used to the little things and maybe the absolutely insignificant won't be so scary any more. Shock yourself and get used to the surprise: that's the best way to deal with the big stuff when it comes -- and with our stupid Bearers in town, the big stuff is always going to show up! Come on, Roseluck -- even Fluttershy can deal with a cat, and she's the weakest pony in the world! I don't even know how you can stand to live here. Maybe you should try your luck in Trottingham: they're so peaceful that it's boring..." Which was part of why she'd left it after a mere two moons.
A small part.
Somehow, Roseluck straightened all four legs: the half-bend of the knees normally seen in Carnie's presence momentarily vanished, and the earth pony's voice became -- hard. Angry. "I'll outlast you."
And Flitter's endless labor produced another tiny result. "Sure you will..." Flitter challenged, deliberately drawling out the first word in order to keep the moment of success around that much longer, then trotted away, Carnie happily taking the lead.
Huh. So there is a spine somewhere in there. Who knew?
One down, several tens of thousands to go. Not that Roseluck was truly finished yet. Not that Flitter might last in Ponyville long enough to keep her going at all...
...Roseluck would outlast her.
Everypony always did.
Carnie tugged a little at her end of the leash, and Flitter glanced in that direction. "The fountain? Okay, cat -- I know you're not going to swim..." She let Carnie take her that way and watched as the cat jumped up to the edge, then lay down to lap at the water.
"That's your third drink on this walk," Flitter told her, watching the triangular ears perk towards the voice. Flitter had no problems with openly talking to animals, even if Fluttershy did it. It shook some ponies up to hear normal conversation between a pony and something only a little less intelligent than the majority: that was enough. "Are you really that thirsty today? It's not that hot out." No thanks to Rainbow Dash, as per usual.
Carnie stopped drinking for a moment, turned to face Flitter, meowed once, and then went back to the fountain.
Flitter sighed. "Okay, cat, I get it. You want to drink, so you'll drink. Just let me know when you need a bathroom spot." As much fun as it was to make ponies realize that the beauty of flower gardens was purely temporary anyway and cat urine should still count as watering no matter what the scent was like... "And then we'll get you some hunting in." Flitter put fifteen extra decibels on 'hunting' and watched with pleasure as several ponies jumped, with two staying in the air. "Sound like fun?"
Carnie turned away from the water long enough to meow again, and there was something a little rusty in the sound, like the water wasn't quite reaching the cat's throat. And then she went back to drinking.
It was a game they played, and Flitter always acted her part to perfection.
"Yes, that's very nice, you stupid cat," she affectionately told Carnie. "It's a perfect catch. That mouse's tail is almost a third as long as yours. And I'm very proud of you. It's a great gift. But I don't need to eat it. You do." She carefully nudged it back towards the cat with her right hoof. "Come on, cat -- every time you do this, I get some more money in my savings for when we have to -- move again." Would Cloudchaser want to come with her? They'd been back together for so short a time, the renewed bond might not be that strong yet, and...
...there would be time to face that later. But Flitter would have to face it. The inevitable always arrived sooner or later: that was why it had the name. And generally, it wound up being sooner.
Another nudge at the ex-mouse. "So eat up. It was a good hunt -- enjoy the results."
The cat stood in the middle of the waving grass of the wild zone's fringe. It was the best place to hunt: an area without too much danger and with no chance of accidentally getting somepony's pet. Nothing had ever come out to get them -- at least, not in this fringe.
Carnie lowered her head and nudged the former rodent back towards Flitter.
The pegasus smiled. "Enough, cat -- we both know how this ends." Back towards Carnie.
The tortoiseshell assented, scooping the body in with her left paw and sniffing it carefully. She kept sniffing it for some time.
And then she got up and walked away. Plopped down in the dirt and stared at the grass stalks as they were shifted by the wind.
One paw came up, batted at the movement. Went back down.
Flitter was getting worried.
It had been three days since their last walk together: the weather schedule had mostly kept them indoors, as Ponyville had been due for an extended bout of thunderstorms and Flitter didn't have the pull to reschedule anything. Carnie had been stuck inside for the duration, and the cat had spent most of that time drinking. She was almost always at the water bowl, or meowing for Flitter to deliver a fresh and cold reload. And when she wasn't, she was urinating the consequences away. Flitter had been spending a lot of time changing litter.
She hadn't had to shift the clay that morning. Carnie hadn't made it to the box.
Flitter had pulled out her old fishing rod, gone down to the dam and tried her luck in the rain. It was unusual for a pony to learn about fishing -- unless that pony had a cat and wound up traveling a lot. Cats loved fish, and even with the equipment having a Tartarus-forged cost attached just based on the sheer scarcity of the things, the savings from catching a few meals eventually paid for it and then started putting bits back in Flitter's saddlebags. She had actually come to enjoy fishing. There was a certain challenge to it which few ponies understood, and as for the solitude...
...Carnie was usually on the bank next to her. Pressed tightly. Warm and fuzzy and there.
Not that morning, of course. Flitter didn't take her out in the rain. But usually there was the feeling of presence at her side, instead of this cold damp --
-- emptiness.
Flitter had skills few ponies possessed, none of which were reflected in her mark (although she had noticed that dragonflies loved to skim over water). She could catch fish and since her luck had been with her, she'd gotten a large river trout. She could gut them, and that was something hardly anypony could bring themselves to even think of. And she could prepare them. It had all been self-taught, and she had become good at it. Not that there were any real applications beyond going into the pet food business, but... well, there was an additional side benefit in that few things could shake a pony up like telling them you were going home to gut a fish.
Carnie poked at the freshest of river trout with her nose. Meowed a few times. And went back to her water bowl.
Flitter looked at the abandoned food and tried to remember the last time she'd seen Carnie eat.
"We're going to the vet," she told the cat.
Which, since it was a word Carnie knew well, normally would have meant the visit was preceded by a twenty-minute chase around the house. Instead, Flitter was able to gather her up inside of a minute.
And then Flitter was scared.
Flitter believed most ponies were stupid. It was the core of her philosophy. It was the heart of her existence. And in the case of Ponyville's one and only actual veterinarian, a pony she'd never encountered before, she happened to be right.
"I don't treat possums," the stallion told her.
Flitter stared at him. "This is my cat," she told him, briefly at an unaccustomed loss for more insulting words. "You can see she's a cat. Anypony can tell she's a cat."
"With a tail that long? That's a possum."
Flitter briefly glanced at the diploma on the wall. It was in a language she couldn't read and had been granted in a country she'd never heard of, the latter of which took some major work. Back to the supposed vet. "She's a cat! She's sick! She won't eat! All she does is drink and piss! She doesn't play as much any more, she doesn't want her kills from the hunt --" the vet's shudder didn't make her feel as good as it usually would have "-- and she barely purrs! The only thing she cares about is her water bowl, and she's not even making it to her litter box! Is that enough for you to start working on a diagnosis?"
The stallion blinked several times. "A diagnosis?"
"Yes!"
"What does that word mean?"
This time, Flitter's stare actually drove him into a corner. "What kind of vet are you? How do you even stay in business? How many bits are your parents sending you every moon so you can pretend to be the real thing?"
The stallion's chest proudly puffed out. "Two thousand!"
Flitter blinked.
"And I get to write out prescriptions and everything!" he declared after several seconds of additional thought. "Some of them I can even -- um..." He seemed to come back to himself, or at least as close as he ever came, and then looked at Carnie again, who was lying flat on the examining table, not interested in much of anything. "Anyway, no possums. I don't work with them. Or baby ponies who breathe fire and turn out to be dragons. That's just not my specialty."
The words died in Flitter's throat, mostly due to overcrowding within the battle to escape. She looked at another posted diploma in order to buy time for the internal war to produce a truly offensive survivor.
This diploma was legible. It also seemed legitimate. And the name --
"-- you're not a mare."
The stallion blinked. "I'm not? Oh, right! I'm not! You're looking at the diploma for Sweetbark! She's on vacation. I'm filling in for her." He proudly nodded towards the incomprehensible piece of non-parchment. "That one's mine. I brought it with me."
Flitter ground her teeth, mostly as a warm-up exercise. "And -- what do you do?"
"Me? I treat baby ponies. Well -- I would if anypony brought me any. Mostly they all wind up at the hospital. The last one I saw breathed fire. But I figured animals, ponies, it's all the same, right? And I haven't seen anypony in my office for moons plus Sweetbark said anything important would wind up somewhere else anyway so I couldn't possibly do any damage --"
One very long polysyllabic word won. Flitter used it.
Dumbing it down enough for the stallion to understood just how strongly she was insulting him took most of an hour.
And that left her doing something she hated. Something Flitter only would have done for Carnie.
Most ponies could smell the cottage long before they saw it. The odor wasn't strong -- just drifting and effectively permanent. The lone pony resident managed to keep it all off her body by what was probably classified as heroic measures by those prone to misuse the word, but the building and grounds themselves were within a permanent olfactory zone of the stuff. Dozens of animal species producing dozens of feces drops and urine sprays. You could scrub forever and it would never completely go away. It wasn't harsh by any means, but it was always present, and it never dropped into background awareness.
A toucan stared at her as she flew towards the front door. Two flamingos blinked in vaguely confused ways. Several mice scattered as they picked up on the scent coming from her special traveling left saddlebag. Normally, she would have had to order Carnie not to stalk because some ponies could get really upset when something with an owner was attacked (or even something which was just waiting for one), but her cat wasn't interested in that kind of activity right now. Or much of anything else.
Flitter touched down, brought up her left hoof to knock -- then decided that would have been the ultimate indignity and just pushed at the door. It swung open and she angrily trotted through, making the yellow pegasus who was feeding the chipmunks in the center of the living room floor jump. It was the only good moment Flitter had experienced in days.
She reached into her special saddlebag with her teeth, gently brought Carnie out by the scruff of the cat's neck, tasted the fur as several shed hairs came off on her tongue.
"She's sick," Flitter said. "Do something."
The ridiculously shy barely-pegasus slowly trotted over. Carnie looked up from her slumped position, a seemingly boneless spread of feline on the floor. Several small animals approached, sniffed at her. The cat didn't bother to move.
The yellow pony made an odd sound, one which was almost three-quarters of the way to a meow. Carnie's mouth opened, and the noise which emerged was filled with rust.
Fluttershy looked directly at Flitter.
"...tell me."
Fluttershy listened. She was good at that. Flitter supposed you had to be good at listening when nearly every sound in the world scared you and careful attention had to be paid in order to find out if any of them were approaching. And sometimes she would ask questions, which Flitter answered as carefully as she could while keeping her usual job out of the way, no matter how hard it was not to be irritated by Fluttershy's stupid voice.
Flitter truly disliked Fluttershy's voice. It wasn't just the stupid softness which could make the pegasus so hard to hear, or the slight vibration which often intruded, the sound of tears being held back with an effort which could break at any second. It was the way sentences seemed to fade in and out, that hesitation before speech began or continued, as if every bit of strength possessed had to be summoned in order for speech to take place at all. It got on Flitter's stressed nerves, and it never stopped.
"...is that all of it?"
Flitter was just barely restraining herself from snapping. "That's everything I've seen. You're supposed to be the big animal expert with your mark." The freak mark, the talent which a pegasus should never have manifested. "What's wrong with her?"
"...I could be wrong..."
So naturally she has to cover her own rump before she does anything. Like that giant spread of a tail doesn't do it already.
"...and I wish I was... but I'm sure it's diabetes."
"I don't know what that is." Her teeth were grinding again. It felt as if her bow was beginning to slip.
"...it's a disease --"
"-- I know that!" It was all she could take, and it pleased her to see the shout send Fluttershy shrinking, the yellow pegasus seeming to withdraw into her own withers. "I know she's sick! I figured that out all by myself without any mark! What's the cure?"
The answering words were a squeak, too high and fast to hear.
Flitter's lips pulled back, and Fluttershy became even smaller. "The vet is out of town! The replacement is an idiot and she can't be that good herself or ponies wouldn't keep coming to somepony who never even went to the stupid school! You're all there is! Tell me!"
Just at the edge of hearing, the softest tones it would have been possible to pick up at all. "...there is no cure."
Flitter's back legs went out from under her. She sat down hard, and a small white rabbit scurried away just in time. She felt it kick her before running into another room. She just barely felt it.
She disliked the rabbit. Everypony in town disliked that rabbit, and that was at the absolute minimum. But now she felt she could actually come to hate it. And as for its supposed mistress...
"Fine," she gritted out. "There's no cure. What's the treatment?"
Fluttershy's blue-green eyes darted around, looked at the other animals in the room -- and Flitter noticed that all of those animals seemed to be a lot closer now. They were starting to form a circle, they were closing in on the intruder...
"...no," the yellow pegasus said. "...she's upset. She's -- allowed to be. Please... leave her alone..."
And they backed off.
Flitter told herself that she was only exhaling because it was a necessary part of breathing, then looked at Fluttershy, who had sunk down next to Carnie. One weak yellow wing had stretched out and was gently stroking the cat. Her cat. Fluttershy had no right to do that. "The treatment," Flitter hissed. "Tell me."
"...I... have to confirm. I have to know it's diabetes. I'm sure -- but if there's any chance I'm wrong..." Trembling now. Weak and useless, but the only resort Flitter had without losing another day to travel. "...I have to know. There's a test... I have to -- take some of her blood... just a few drops... It won't hurt very much, I promise..."
Flitter turned away, all the better to glare at the temporarily-retreated animals. "Don't you dare hurt her," she told the air. "No more than you absolutely have to."
"...it's just a few drops..."
"So do it already."
She didn't watch. The tiny mew of protest told her when it happened, and the soft words which Fluttershy had no right to whisper into her cat's ears made that stop. The yellow pegasus left the room, came back. Flitter had no idea how much time had passed in between.
"...it... it is diabetes -- and Flitter --"
Had Fluttershy ever used her name before? She was surprised the non-vet even knew it. There should have been no right to speak it now, not in that tone, concern and sorrow wrapped up together...
"-- there is no treatment."
Flitter slowly turned back to face Fluttershy. The yellow pegasus trembled again, but stayed where she was, not giving up any of her so-precious ground.
Carnie made a small sound. It could have been a mew, or would have been from a cat who'd been able to eat.
"What do you mean, no treatment?" It was a whisper, but it projected, it still seemed to make more sound than Fluttershy could manage on her best day. "It's a disease. So there isn't a cure. There has to be something you can give her where she just lives with it!"
"...it's -- been around for a while. She's had it for some time... she might have been born with a predisposition towards it, or it's a fault in the blood, we're still trying to learn about how it spreads or if it even does... it just got to the point where it was visible... cats can live for years before it manifests, but most of them don't... she only got as far as she did because you've been feeding her so well... I can tell how she was eating before it really started, I can see how beautiful her fur is... you have to really love a friend to take care of them like that..."
Fluttershy was trying to praise her. Imply she'd bought Carnie moons of time. Flitter didn't want to hear it. Any of it. "So there's no proven treatment. What's the experimental stuff? There's always experimental stuff! What does the disease do?"
"...there -- are ponies working on it... but there isn't anything. Not that won't -- do it faster."
And this was a scream: birds took off, animals started but did not close in, pictures vibrated in their frames. "Do what?"
Fluttershy took a slow breath, and the words which followed it came out immediately. "Flitter --"
Don't say my name, don't act like you care, you stupid failure of a freak
"-- it's fatal."
The words fell between them.
Flitter found her wings flaring out. Her hoofs scraping at the ground as her nostrils widened and her head lowered. Fought the urge to charge. "Say that again. Lie to my face one more time just to try and make me feel sick, you bucking horse apple smear --"
"-- it's... fatal," Fluttershy whispered. "She's just going to drink more. She won't eat. You can try to force food into her mouth and she won't swallow, she'll just throw it up after. Her body will start to -- shut down. This is moving fast... she has days, Flitter, and they won't be days you'd ever want somepony you love to go through... she's just going to suffer, she's starting to really suffer now, and... the days she has aren't days you'll want to remember, time you want her to have as her last under Sun..."
you can't be saying this, you can't, stop talking
"...you have to think about -- mercy."
She still wanted to charge. She didn't want to fight it. But the words had to come first, and she was delighted to see every one hitting Fluttershy harder than the impact of a pony body ever could. "You -- you sick piece of -- you want to kill her, don't you? You saw me not cheering you and your stupid two-point-three, you saw my lips just moving and now you want your revenge, your soft little whispery revenge through killing the only thing that -- how much meat does your crew need? How many pets do you talk ponies into letting you kill just to save on the bills?" A deep breath, and she let what she saw to be, prayed would be the fatal blow fly. "How many 'friends' have you murdered?"
And on the smallest waft of breath, "Four hundred and ninety-nine."
There had been no hesitation. There had been no measurable delay to the answer at all. There had only been a number.
Flitter felt sicker than she ever had in her life. "You keep count?"
"...I have to... I have to remember their names..."
"You -- you sick --" It was the only word she had. It wasn't strong enough. But it was hurting the yellow never-should-have-been, she could see how much it hurt and Fluttershy deserved all of it and more, four hundred and ninety-nine times over.
And it still wasn't enough.
Flitter charged.
The horde descended.
She heard it even as she saw Fluttershy go up, as Flitter slammed into the wall behind where her target had been, slumped to the floor as the dizziness from impact began to close in. She'd forgotten Fluttershy had even that most basic capability, could barely think of her as a pegasus at all, and the most basic of dodges bought time for the rush of so many smaller wings to reach her ears, the clicking of clawed feet moving over wood, so many of those sounds, dozens, they would fall on her and overwhelm in the crush of tiny bodies, she would die from the blood loss of a thousand little bites and the sickness she couldn't reach would have a new source of meat for those meals --
"STOP!"
Flitter almost expected the shout to have come from her own throat. But it had been the only other pony voice in the room, a voice which couldn't be that loud.
But they stopped. They all stopped.
"She -- can be -- angry!" Fluttershy declared. "She has every right! This is the time for anger! So let her be angry!"
The animals gazed at her, hundreds of bright eyes holding on a single word -- or order.
"She won't hurt me," Fluttershy said, voice dropping closer to her normal lack of volume. "...it won't happen. Just -- go out of the room for a little while. Please? It has to be just me and her with Carnie."
...how... how does she even know Carnie's name?
More wings. More clicking. But all moving away.
And then there were soft feathers brushing against her forehead.
"...you're hurt," Fluttershy said. "...you went into the wall too hard... but it's not serious... you'll just have a bruise... I can give you something for the pain..."
"Don't touch me," Flitter panted. "Don't you ever --"
"...all right." Fluttershy withdrew, went to the couch, and waited.
After a minute, Flitter was able to stand again and slowly trotted over to Carnie, who hadn't moved during the charge. She hadn't tried to defend Flitter. The strength hadn't been there. And Flitter --
-- had vaulted her own cat on the way to attack.
Flitter stood over Carnie now. Guarding.
"You're telling me there is no treatment. Not even anything experimental. And the disease is fatal."
Fluttershy nodded, just once.
"And she's going to suffer."
Again.
"What would a real vet say?"
That got a small flinch. "...Sweetbark would say the same thing after she did the blood test. She'll be home in four days... but that's four days, four horrible days. And then -- she would send you to me."
Which got Flitter to blink. Flatly, "What?"
"...she always does. I wish she didn't... I wish she would just do her job... but it's me, it's always me, she knows I'm here and it's always me just so she won't have to..."
There was another tiny almost-mew. Flitter looked at her cat. The cat who wouldn't eat.
"...any vet would do the test," Fluttershy whispered. "You could go to Canterlot, that's faster than waiting for Sweetbark. You can go anywhere. But... it'll always come out the same. And they'll all say it... that it's better... to..."
She couldn't go on. The weakest pony in the world almost collapsed under the weight of unspoken words --
-- and then continued anyway. "...let go. Look at her, Flitter... she's so weak, and she'll only get worse. If you watch her, for all of those days... you'll remember. The memories will become -- stronger. Sometimes they can get stronger than every other memory you have of her. For some ponies, who won't let go, they have to watch every minute as they try to take care of their friend and nothing works, and those memories become the only way they remember their friend at all. That's not -- who she is. You love her... I know you do, I can see it in the way you're trying to protect her. But every minute she has left under Sun... will become agony. The shadowlands... no pain. It hurts to let go, it hurts to send them, I hate it, I hate it so much..." A single tear fell, then gained company. "...but it's the cycle, even when it turns too soon. It's my job. She won't hurt any more. She won't hurt -- when I show her the way. It never does, I promise. It's the end of pain..."
Starkly, the only words Flitter had, "It's the end of life."
"...yes."
"And you've killed four hundred and ninety-nine other times."
"...I've been here for years... I left school, I came down so early... Sweetbark... she thinks that if she never does it, ponies will keep going to her. They won't associate her -- with the end. Only with life. Only with success. Everything fatal... even when she's in town, it goes to me. And everypony knows it, somehow. They won't even go into her office any more if they think it's bad. Only me... and it never stops hurting... four hundred and ninety-nine, Flitter. I keep count... because it feels like every time takes something away from me, and I don't know how much I have to give any more... I remember their names because..."
The tears were falling faster, the fabric of the couch becoming waterstained -- no, old stains taking on still more salt.
"...when my part in the cycle ends... when I go to the shadowlands... somepony will ask me why. On every single name. And I'll have to remember every last one, explain why it was the only option left. And then maybe I'll see them... and if they don't hate me... as much I hate mys --"
Flitter would never remember picking Carnie up, scooping her back to the saddlebag. Could never admit to fleeing. All she knew was that when her vision cleared again, when memory chose to record again, she was outside and nearly a fifth of the way to Canterlot.
lying... lying sociopath looking for her nice round number... element of sickness... any real vet will --
The first real vet told her it was diabetes.
The second agreed it was fatal, and would be so within days.
The third did not praise her for keeping the onset away for so long.
The fourth had what looked to be a home-printed diploma and offered her faintly glowing green capsules which she recognized as an illegal drug taken by pegasi who wanted to boost their flight speed exactly once, because 'once' was all they would probably live long enough for.
What happened after that didn't make her feel any better, nor did the praise heaped on her by the Solar Guards as she flew away.
There was a certain patch of cloud Carnie liked to sit on. It was a hoof-molded bit of Flitter's east-facing windowsill in the bedroom. The cat enjoyed soaking up Sun from that position, lazily regarded birds who were flying past too far away for a casual swat, and just generally put a hedonistic note on life. She always sprang up to that resting point in a single casual bound, giving no thought to takeoff or landing. She just did it, and it was amazing to watch, a lesson on what instinct and skill could accomplish when thought didn't get in the way.
Flitter had to lift her up.
The rain had stopped, at least for the moment. There was enough Sun to enjoy. But Carnie just lay there. She wouldn't purr, no matter how much Flitter stroked her. Sometimes she made odd sounds. They weren't meows. They could have been pain.
They might have been begging...
...no. The sicko who lived just outside the fringe was making her think that way. The darkness was getting into her head. The disease was fatal: Flitter -- accepted that. She had heard the words from real vets and then gone into the Canterlot Archives herself for the last confirmation. A condition which was barely understood. Something in the blood. Something wasn't processed properly. Possibly ran in family lines. No treatment. No stalling. Just -- time, and very little of it. But all time under Sun meant something, even time spent in --
-- pain.
No desire to hunt.
No joy of food.
No returning of affection.
Just -- existing.
Barely.
She wished Cloudchaser was with her. She wanted somepony she could talk to, somepony who wasn't the freak. But Cloudchaser was away, would be for another two weeks, had to go visiting...
...or maybe that was just the excuse.
Maybe she left. Again.
She might never come back.
Everypony leaves me and I leave everypony.
Everypony...
....but not everyone.
Carnie never left me.
She wants to take Carnie away. Because she hates me. Because she's a failure and a freak and I know it and she's punishing me for that in the only way she knows how.
She wants to kill the only thing in the world which ever completely accepted me for myself.
Flitter had tried to make Carnie eat. She had given the cat all of her favorite foods. She had purchased the freshest of meat and the injury to her budget had meant nothing. She'd found wild catnip. Nothing had worked. It was water or nothing. And it was barely water today.
She had thought about trying to pry the cat's jaws open, force food in -- but how? Wings, hooves -- neither could act to create such a thing. Only horns. Flitter didn't have one, never would. Didn't know a single unicorn who would help her. She disliked every unicorn in town and they felt the same way about her.
I could ask Rarity.
The thought surprised her so much that she brought it closer for better examination. She has -- what's the cat's name? Opal. Overpampered fluffball who probably hates the world because Rarity made her look like an overpampered fluffball when she just wants to be a hunter. But she loves that cat. You can't have a cat and not love it. And she's a unicorn. She might --
-- help.
Me.
'You're so old, you're not even into quaraxing! No, I take that back -- that's not old, that's dead!'
It had been moons since Twilight Sparkle's lone disastrous attempt at creating the three-minute date. Flitter wasn't even into quaraxing any more.
She would never...
...she wouldn't...
...she's so stupid...
The Boutique doors opened for them.
Rarity listened. Flitter would never remember exactly what she had said, but the designer listened to all of it. And then Rarity let them in.
Carnie was gently levitated onto a plush cushion, the soft blue field seeming to caress the tortoiseshell fur. Opal calmly walked in, regarded the newcomer, jumped up -- and then lay down next to Carnie, softly purring.
Rarity said a few things which Flitter didn't want to hear. Words about understanding. Living in dread of the same thing happening. Knowing that her own lifespan was so much longer than Opal's, that a goodbye would come -- or (and the words were so soft, the fake accent barely attached at all) that her duties as Bearer could so easily mean that the pony would walk into the shadowlands first, leaving behind a cat who would never truly understand where her companion had gone. For that, Rarity had made arrangements, a new home waiting -- just in case.
She spoke about being willing to try, to help as long as her assistance could do anything at all. But she knew the other one, the pony Flitter currently didn't even want to give the grace of a name. And that said pony would never have said such a thing if it hadn't been the only option left. The final --
-- kindness.
The soft blue field gently held Carnie's jaws, made them open. A secondary bubble moved a little fresh fish into the cat's mouth while a third massaged the throat, creating an automatic swallowing reaction.
Carnie was eating.
And then she threw up.
"Get the thread! See the thread? Want to hunt it? Here, I'll pull it right past your paw..."
"I got this especially for you, you've never had it before, but I thought something new --"
"Please?"
"...please..."
She didn't knock. She pushed her way in, and hundreds of eyes stared at her with fresh hate.
The blue-green ones looked up from where they had been measuring out medicine. Medicine for a creature who could use it. Medicine which would work.
"Do it," Flitter said, and waited for her soul to die.
She had to watch.
She had seen Carnie hunt. She had loved watching Carnie hunt, and part of that was because virtually nopony else ever would. But some had been the movement. The smoothness of muscle play. The joy in the cat's actions, the feline having the time of her life and then the best part, proudly presenting her best friend with a gift...
But it had never been about the thrill of the kill.
Flitter didn't want to watch Carnie die. She felt she needed to. It was part of her punishment for becoming a murderer.
And naturally Fluttershy didn't want her to.
"...it'll be -- what you remember."
Her own voice felt broken. Fluttershy could hear that. Anypony could. "So -- what can I do?"
"...pet her. Tell her you love her."
"What -- what --" Repeating herself now. Sounding stupider with every word. "-- do you do with the body?"
"...that's up to you. Some ponies want to bury... I can help you dig... or some just -- leave them for me, and I'll do it, if that's what you want..."
"She lived in the clouds. You can't bury in a cloud." In a way, she could: the spell would hold. But given enough time, every cloud dissipated. Eventually, Flitter would leave Ponyville, just as she wound up leaving everywhere else. And when that happened, the special touches applied to her home -- the ones just about any pegasus could do, the things which made it stable -- unless somepony else moved in, they would fade in time. The ground was -- forever. "You do it. Bury her. She came from the ground -- let her go back."
Fluttershy nodded and left them alone for a while.
She petted Carnie. She rubbed the fur with her wings. In a whisper she hoped the yellow pegasus would never hear, she begged for a final purr, and it never came.
After a while, she called Fluttershy into the room. The cottage's owner and her cat left it together. Only one came back.
She didn't trust.
She still felt there was a sickness there, had to be. How could anypony kill five hundred times and not have their soul crushed by it? Flitter had killed once, just a few minutes ago, and it felt as if there was a void below her heart, a pulling one dragging the rest of her inside it. Surely the freak would do something to the body, and once Flitter caught her...
So she hid in the last place the world's least-deserving-of-the-name pegasus would ever look: above. Found a grey cloud and lurked behind it, watched the cottage until Fluttershy came out the back, accompanied by several of her so-called friends. Rabbits, and not just That One. Badgers. Multiple digging species. And two raccoons, who could just barely totter on their hind legs while something halfway between claws and the unnatural minotaur appendage called hands carried...
...she made herself look. She forced herself to watch.
"Please," Fluttershy said, just barely loud enough to hear. Or maybe Flitter was imagining the word, from so high up.
The burrowers did just that, and the ground opened. The body was gently lowered and then covered again. The animals scattered, leaving only Fluttershy looking at the new disruption to the earth.
"...you were good for her," Fluttershy said. "She needed... a friend... and you gave her that. You were a good cat, I know... she loved you so much..."
There was rain scheduled, a misting to close the thunderstorm time, one which would start about half an hour ahead. Pegasi would be coming into the area to cover up the last clear patches. Flitter didn't have all that long before somepony asked what she was doing there and she couldn't pretend to be working, she'd taken so much time off already just trying to save --
"Carnie," Fluttershy said, and pain radiated from every letter. Then "Winnowill. Chaser. Fleetfoot. Garnet. Midnight..." A long pause, and her tears fell as eyelids scrunched shut. "Leaf -- Leaffall..."
Five hundred names.
Seconds before the other pegasi would have arrived, a little after Fluttershy finished (but continued to silently stare at the ground), there was a knock at the cottage door. Flitter turned in that direction and saw a worried-looking dark blue unicorn stallion field-carrying a visibly sick puppy.
Fluttershy looked up at the sound. Let the last of the tears drop away. Went to do it all again.
It was the next day. Sun was back, not that it mattered.
"Give me a cat."
"...no."
"It's what you do. You're a bucking animal adoption service and everypony knows it. Give me a cat."
"...you're not ready."
"I. Want. A. Cat."
"...and... after there's been more time... I'll help you meet one. But... not now."
"I say when I'm ready! Not you! You already got to say enough!"
"...right now... all you'll see -- is her. Whoever you take... won't be her... and you'll hate what should have been a friend for that. The pain... won't go away. Not completely, not ever. But when you don't think of her every hour... when you can look at somepony out with their friend and not hate them for having one... when it's just an ache... come to me. And then I'll introduce you to a friend who needs you. Or... a friend you need. But... this isn't the time, Flitter..."
"Don't say my name."
"...all right."
"I want --"
"-- no."
They looked at each other for a while.
"No," Fluttershy said.
And Flitter left.
The little black-and-white ball of fuzz yawned hugely and stretched before curling back up and falling asleep.
Flitter had named him Killer, which felt like it would be a great name for shaking ponies up with whenever she mentioned it. There would be some time before she could jolt them out of complacency with his hunting prowess, as he was currently most interested in eating, sleeping, and having somepony pay attention to him. But once he started to stretch his lithe muscles a little... she would get him hunting. Leash-trained. Make sure he never got too close to the edge of a cloud, and that spell had been no cheaper the second time around. She might even teach him which ponies to dislike, although that would have to start early. And naturally, she'd start with the Bearers.
Pinkie was still mostly okay. But as for the rest...
Flitter disliked Twilight Sparkle for not knowing what power was meant to do.
Rainbow Dash for being her employment superior while in no way deserving it.
Applejack because honesty should be more than just not lying.
Rarity? Generosity shouldn't mean giving of yourself to ponies who had verbally attacked you -- should it?
But Flitter no longer disliked Fluttershy, not after the pegasus had matched her to Killer. Flitter hated her. She finally had a reason worth making the effort for.
Flitter hated Fluttershy for being the strongest pony in the world.
