Equestrian Psycho

Urgency spurred her into a gallop. Rarity tore through Manehattan with savage abandon. To her, tardiness was abhorrent, especially when a handsome stallion was expecting her imminent arrival. She didn't date often and she certainly didn't want to sully the times she did.

Damn it all... she muttered. Ponies griped hotly at her as she hurtled by with no care as to whom she smashed into. Her date was scheduled for six o'clock. The event was nothing fancy – just dinner at a local eatery and a popular stage performance afterward. Nevertheless she made a beeline for the restaurant. Her charming and presumably upset stallion was likely fed up with waiting.

Earlier in the day, Rarity had undergone a beauty and cleansing routine the likes of which she'd never attempted before. Her bathroom resembled a botanist's laboratory with the sheer amount of oils, creams, and rejuvenating herbs strewn about the counter. The source of her current lateness and great indignation was the sleep brought on from a particularly relaxing facial cleanser. Once she'd applied it, relaxation turned into drowsing, and that turned to slumber. What felt like a light nap to her was a loss of hours in reality.

The moment she woke up, she morphed into a raging tempest. She abandoned the rest of her beauty regimen and rocketed out of Carousel Boutique, cursing the narcoleptic effects of her cream. By this point the streets of the city were stuffed with hungry ponies swept up in the dinnertime rush. Rarity swerved erratically to avoid full-on collisions with passersby, but indirectly smacked into half a dozen or so ponies.

“Watch out you crazy-ass psycho!” yelled a disgruntled stallion after dodging Rarity's onrush.

“I'll tear your throat out!” Rarity growled fiercely, not bothering to look back at him. She continued on for several hundred feet then rounded a corner, coming to a screeching halt in front of the restaurant. Not stopping to catch her breath, she hurried inside. The eatery was at total capacity. Two sizable families had already sat down near the entrance doors in wait for the next available table. Young fillies wallowed about on their parents' laps, much too bored to wait for food. One of the youngsters hopped down and dashed across the room, cutting right in front of Rarity's path.

“Control your children!” Rarity snapped at the embarrassed mother. She tried to ignore the growing throng and shoved her way into the dining area. Her stallion of interest was brilliant red with a blue mane, and a dashing personality as jubilant as his color palette.

There wasn't a free booth or table in the restaurant. Rarity hopped up and down in an attempt to locate her date. Why they hadn't agreed to meet elsewhere, she had no idea. Angry grunts surrounded her as the crowd grew weary of her persistent movement. Despite seeing ponies of every color on the spectrum, including many red ones, she couldn't spot hers. A crushing sadness threatened to overwhelm her as if the situation was somehow her fault. Now acting more on instinct, she exited the crowd and took her sentry mission into the aisles of the restaurant.

“Excuse me miss, do you work here?” a pony asked from a booth.

Rarity ignored her and kept a brisk trot through the aisles. Over every booth and each table she searched, but to no avail. With a huff, she began to resign herself to the fact that Mr. Handsome simply wasn't there.

“Excuse me,” she said to a passing waitress. “Have you seen a red stallion in here? Tall, handsome, blue mane?”

“I have,” the waitress responded. “Is he your date?”

Rarity nodded and smiled with minor hope.

“Well...” The pegasus sighed. “He left a little bit ago. I'm sorry, hon.”

Her stomach dropped. “You're certain?”

The waitress nodded. “Yeah. He was here for a while but I guess he thought you weren't coming. Again, I'm sorry.”

“Thanks.” Rarity's voice was barely audible. She whimpered in despair and hid her face from the waitress.

“Sorry,” the pegasus consoled.

Rarity strode out of the restaurant with tears streaming down her face. The only thing silencing her baleful wails was the shame she felt from the public eye. It was her own fault, or so she thought. If only she hadn't stayed out so late last night indulging in her “hobby.” If only she'd been more rested, she wouldn't have shot herself in the hoof, so to speak. Damn it! she thought. Wondering about her date's feelings made her own quite a bit worse. The poor stallion must have been devastated. Or enraged. He must have thought she was too petty and fickle to meet him. A floozy! A tease!

These projected opinions soured her already terrible mood. The flood waters of her sorrow were quickly mounting and she needed to reprieve herself before she exploded. An alleyway beckoned to her as if it was offering shelter. She cut through the cramped path until she arrived on the next street over. This still wasn't good enough. She wanted to be miles away from there. Preferably in another country. Every passing pony jeered at her in her mind. They snickered at her passively and whispered nasty things to their friends.

Rarity crossed several more streets over until she found herself on the outer fringes of the city. The sidewalks here were cracked in some places and outright shattered in others. Normally that part of Manehattan was reserved for lower income families and immigrants. Rarity hated the thought of being there for any reason other than to criticize it. Yet she stopped along the front of an abandoned shop to catch her breath and work through her cloying sadness. There were only a sparse number of problems that crying it out couldn't alleviate in some way.

The root of the problem was that Rarity felt she'd really lost a good one. Mr. Handsome had been the first stallion in months that seemed normal, not a pompous airhead who considered Rarity a “trophy” marefriend. The fact that she had wrecked a future relationship before it even started was almost too painful to handle.

The setting sun personified Rarity's spirit. She hugged herself and whimpered vainly, still sitting against the cool bricks of the building. Two ponies walked toward her in the distance. Her thoughts gravitated to all the negative happenings she'd incurred within the last few days. Opal had a vet visit coming up which she didn't feel like dealing with, Sweetie Belle bombed a school project and was harshly reprimanded, her own clothing line was selling poorly, she hadn't seen her friends in over a week, and now her love life was back to square one.

A wolf whistle sounded from the sidewalk. Two boorish stallions walked by, slowing briefly to ogle Rarity from afar.

“How you doing, baby?” one of them called.

“Piss off, you thugs!” Rarity snapped.

The two looked at each other and one of them said, “Damn girl, be nice! We were just trying to compliment you! What's a pretty unicorn like you doing out here crying all by herself?”

Rarity growled to herself. She did not have time for this. “Leave me alone!” she warned.

The males approached her. Not again... she thought.

“You really ought to be nice to people,” said the second pony. “Being mean ain't going to get you nowhere. Me and my friend here saw you all distressed out here and we just wanted to help. Do you need a hug? We'd be happy to snuggle with you if you want.” They both snickered.

Rarity stood up and carefully straightened her mane. “Do you know what I do for fun?” she asked.

The friends hooted at each other. They misconstrued Rarity's question as a response to their offer.

“What do you do, baby?” asked the first one.

“I murder criminals like you for fun,” Rarity told them matter-o-factly. “Get the hell away from me or I'll slash your throats and play around in your blood.”

The duo's expressions changed to confusion. They looked at each other again and took a step back.

“Whatever, bitch,” said the first one. “Let's go.

“Yeah,” the friend agreed. “Forget this psycho cunt.”

“How dare you!?” screamed Rarity, smacking him on the back of the head. “You have no idea who I am or what I've been through! How dare you call me a cunt!? You little rat! Look at me!”

The males both reacted by extracting switchblades from their bags and shoving Rarity backwards. Rarity levitated a nearby brick with her magic and brought it up beside her. “Don't test me!” she seethed.

“Fuck you!” the first stallion shouted.

Without another word, Rarity smashed the brick into the side of his face, causing a bloody eruption of teeth and skin. He fell silently onto the ground. The other stallion was temporarily stunned from the brutality of the gruesome act. Rarity levitated the brick again and slammed it down onto the stallion's face in the exact same spot just to make sure the job was done. After gazing at the pulpy and unidentifiable corpse with complete indifference, she hurled the gory brick behind her onto the top of the building.

“Oh fuck!” the remaining pony squealed. “What the fuck!?” He bolted toward the street with primal fear as a fuel.

Rarity galloped after him, not keen on leaving witnesses. “Why did it have to be today?” she whined at her fleeing victim. “Why did you have to pick today to make me do this? I'm not even enjoying it!”

The stallion pulled a jackknife turn onto a dimly lit street. Rarity kept hot on his heels as he fled. He led her further into the derelict portion of the city. The houses grew ever shabbier the deeper they ran. Though she knew the city well, she had never ventured this far into its slums.

She was gaining on her witness. He fled into an alleyway to the right. When Rarity rounded the corner, she was confronted with a T shaped alley and no stallion. He'd either ran down and turned left or right. Rarity took her time vigilantly searching for the pony. At the right on the intersection was a dead end. However to the left, she spied her target banging frantically on a dark metal door.

“Let me in!” he begged. “Hurry! She's here!”

Rarity located a broken piece of pipe laying under a pile of refuse. She extracted it and inspected its piercing capacity. The pipe was shattered at the halfway point and made of a compact material. Perfect. Rarity angled it in front of her and set up aim. The stallion was still begging for his life to be let through the door. Whoever was on the other side wasn't paying much heed to his pleas. With one eye closed for maximum accuracy, Rarity lobbed the pipe forward like a javelin. Right as the door swung open, the pipe blasted into the stallion's neck and ripped out of the other side, creating a perfect skewer. He fell forward into the doorway, blocking it from closing again.

A huge pegasus revealed himself in the doorway, horrified at the corpse before him. Rarity attempted to leave before the door guard laid eyes on her, but she didn't get far before she heard, “Freeze!”

She turned around to face the guard and stopped. The muscular pegasus drew a pistol from his flank and trained it on Rarity. “Who the fuck are you?” he pressed.

“I'm a very upset lady,” Rarity informed him. “Your comrade harassed me and then tried to assault me. I had no choice but to dispose of him.”

The guard frantically did a double-take between Rarity and his dead partner. “That's it!” he shouted. “Y-you're going down!”

Before he could pull the trigger, Rarity ripped the gun out of his hoof with her magic and turned the weapon onto its master.

The guard took a sharp breath. “What the-”

Crack! The bullet struck his forehead, bathing the walls behind him in a dripping mess. Now that he was taken care of, it seemed that all the witnesses were gone. That is until Rarity heard a muffled voice coming from the guard's flank. She trotted over and spotted a small walkie-talkie strapped to his leg.

“Hello? Come in!” the voice barked from the device. “Is there a problem up there? Answer me, damn it. Alright that's it. I'm sending more guards.”

Rarity let out a heavy sigh. Typical. Things always got much worse before they got better. Her nauseating day still wasn't finished.

In light of the new circumstances she found it necessary to keep herself armed with the guard's pistol. Carefully stepping over the skewered brute from before, she entered the sinister doorway to find herself on an elevated metal platform inside a moldy basement type room. A single light bulb hung tentatively from a stripped wire. At this point Rarity knew that she had stumbled onto something much bigger than she had anticipated. Unfortunately for the opposing force, she had missed out on a date and was more bloodthirsty than she could ever remember feeling. It was worth any effort just to exact revenge for inconveniencing her.

She descended the steps and pulled open the next door, which led into a grimy hallway choked with pipes and steam. The hall continued on for some time almost like a maze. After a couple minutes of blindly wandering around muggy corners, she emerged in a huge laboratory-like room in which rows upon rows of ponies in medical masks measured fine white powder on long tables.

Oh Celestia...she thought to herself. She immediately hunkered down around the corner so as not to be seen. There were a lot more guards and they were a lot better armed than the first one. Rarity wasn't what a lot of ponies would call street smart, but it didn't take a genius to figure out that she'd stumbled into one of the biggest cocaine distribution plants in Manehattan, possibly even Equestria.

As such, she initiated her assault in the most efficient way she could think of: no guard and guns blazing. She whipped around the corner with her gun ready and instantly targeted one of the guards. Shrieks of terror echoed throughout the room as she blasted him into oblivion. The workers all dove for cover in unison. About one hundred ponies all covered their heads and took shelter under the tables. They scrambled for the exit in which Rarity had entered. The seven remaining security guards zeroed in on Rarity's position and opened fire with their automatic weapons.

Rarity realized that her plan might not have been such a fantastic idea. She dropped to the floor and flattened herself as best she could. From this vantage point, she managed to shoot the guard closest to where she was. She crawled on her stomach over to his corpse where she exchanged her almost empty pistol for his much more useful machine gun. Now the odds were slightly more even.

A shadow passed over her. Rarity whipped over onto her back just as another guard lurched down with a massive knife aimed at her. She instinctively rolled to her left under one of the measuring tables, where she manually lifted her gun and unloaded a large number of bullets into the unlucky guard. His blood splashed onto her, warming her up in the otherwise chilly room.

Five guards to go. A hailstorm of bullets whizzed by above her and grazed the tops of the tables. Instead of wasting time picking off one guard at a time, Rarity aimed upward to the buzzing lights and let loose, trying to hit as many as she could. Showers of glass rained down upon everyone in the room. Rarity took advantage of the temporary distraction and sprang up, surveying the room for the remaining guards. All five of them stood on the far side of the room in front of another door. Luckily they too were busy shielding themselves from the razor sharp hail.

Rarity aimed her gun at them and charged forward at full speed. “You stupid motherfuckers!” she screamed, spraying bullets back and forth over a wide angle. The trick worked. The guards were helpless to the barrage and fell like bowling pins as Rarity approached. Now that all the workers had presumably evacuated and the security was effectively neutralized, all was quiet. Rarity looked at the pile of bodies she'd created in front of the door. This was horrible. She barely even enjoyed killing these goons. To make matters worse, she had a pounding headache.

She shot each guard in the neck to make sure they were dead, and as a final insult. Then there was the matter of the door. Whatever was inside must have been of paramount importance since the dimwit security team had all clustered around it. Rarity hefted the door open and crossed into a waiting room-like area with a tacky rug and a couple of overstuffed couches. Not even the electrical whine of the lights could be heard. The room was soundproof. However since it was of no interest to Rarity, she moved on to the next door. Pressing her ear against it revealed moaning sounds coming from within. Ever so delicately, she cracked open the door just widely enough to see inside.

The room was a makeshift office furnished with a hardwood desk and two expensive chairs. The occupants of the room were a skinny stallion in a gaudy mustard colored suit, and a mare that was bent over his desk whom he was vehemently humping. The two were busy going at it and failed to notice Rarity pick up her gun and silently slip into the room.

A burst of gunfire into the ceiling was enough to grab the attention of the salacious ponies. They screamed and looked at Rarity in sheer terror. The stallion, caught with his dick out, stumbled backwards off his partner and fell into the corner of the room where he slouched down in a defensive position.

“Wait! Wait!” he pleaded. “Don't kill me! Stop!”

Rarity calmly waited for him to make his pitiful spiel.

“I'll give you whatever you want! All the coke you can handle! Just hold on!”

“I do not want any of your drugs,” Rarity said condescendingly.

The mare slowly rolled off of the desk and subsequently hid under it.

“W-what do you want from me?” gasped the stallion. “I've got all sorts of connections. I can make you rich!”

Now the fun was coming back to the sport. Rarity was starting to enjoy herself again. “I want nothing from you,” she said. “Beg for your life, worm. Beg for your life and I might let you live.”

The stallion, still erect, crossed his legs to hide this. “Yes! Anything! I beg you! Whoever you are! I'll kiss the dirt under your hooves!”

Rarity smiled and relished the words. “One of your little cronies harassed me this evening,” she informed him. “He said some very awful things to me. I want you to apologize on his behalf.”

“I'm sorry!” gushed the stallion. “I'm so sorry! He shouldn't have said whatever he did! He's an idiot!”

“He's dead now,” Rarity pointed out.

The stallion closed his eyes and gulped.

“He called me a cunt,” she went on. “I find this very offensive. You don't think I'm a cunt do you?”

“N-no!” he stammered. “Of course not!”

“Thank you,” said Rarity. “I didn't think I was. It really hurt my feelings to hear that, especially as a respectable mare of high social status. In any case, because you seem reasonable, I will not torture you. I will not stick barbed wire up your urethra, and I will not fill your stomach with cement. In fact you don't have to feel any pain at all.” With that, she shot him once in the head. She then crouched down low to the shivering mare's level. She gave her a look of “you could have done something with your life” and then shot her too.

Outside in the alleyway, Rarity was in a funk. She should have felt elated. She should have felt rejuvenated and spunky, but she didn't. She felt like her head was permeating in a thick fog. The buzz she felt from her freshest murders didn't last nearly as long as it should have.

She wandered out into the street and searched for the quickest route back to Carousel Boutique. Eventually she wound up on a more populated street, where startled cries pierced her mental numbness every time she walked under a street light. Oh yes, she thought. I'm covered in blood. Someone called out to her, but she ignored them and trotted down the street. More ponies screamed as they saw her bloodied form pass under a light. She began to run. Two police ponies emerged from a shop a block ahead of her. She saw them but didn't register them in her mind. They shouted at her. They commanded her to stop. She kept running. She kept running and her thoughts started blending together. It was hard for her to focus on anything. The street lights began to soften and bleed together. Her lucidity wavered until she felt like she was in a dreamlike trance. Yet the pain in her head persisted.

She knew the police were chasing her. She knew she was in trouble. Still, she kept running homeward. Her headache intensified with each step she took. After every light, every sidewalk square, her pain grew tenfold until it felt like someone was taking a jackhammer to her skull. She screamed into the night sky and started crying and wiped her bloody mane and kept running and the police were still chasing her and she was so far away from home and her head hurt and-

---

Carousel Boutique was dark. Rarity had no idea how she made it home. She fell to the floor as soon as she'd entered and crawled into the living room, not caring about staining the carpet with blood. The murk in her head was still in full effect. She felt like a ticking time-bomb.

“Sweetie Belle?” she called out in a frail voice. No answer. “She must be at Applebloom's house,” she said out loud.

A hot shower eased her pain a minor degree. Rarity curled up in a ball and watched the blood from her fur slowly running down the drain. She would have fallen asleep if not for the unusual sense of paranoia that gnawed the fringes of her mind. It seemed that miraculously, incredulously, she'd escaped. She was free. Yet there was a constant shadow of suspicion telling her something wasn't right.

She crawled out of the bathroom and down the stairs where she poured herself a tall glass of water and laid herself on the living room couch. The nightly news was talking about a breaking story from Manehattan about cocaine and things Rarity vaguely remembered. For some reason the newscast brought tears to her eyes, and she had never felt more alone or helpless in her life. She sobbed uncontrollably on the couch, using her expensive throw pillows to periodically wipe her nose on. Minutes passed before she regained a slight semblance of composure.

With a trembling hoof, she reached for her phone and dialed the number for Twilight's house. Four rings came and went before a young male answered the phone.

“Hello?” said Spike from the other end. “This is Twilight's house. Who's calling?”

The voice soothed her. “Spikey, it's Rarity,” she answered. “I really need to talk to Twilight. Can you put her on the phone for me please?”

The dragon was delighted to hear his crush. “Rarity! Where were you?” he whined. “We're throwing a party over here and Twilight wanted to invite you! She couldn't get a hold of you this evening. Is everything alright?”

Rarity rubbed her forehead. “Spike, just please put Twilight on the phone for me, okay?”

“Okay, hold on,” he said.

Twilight's familiar voice sounded a moment later. “Hey Rarity! What's going on?”

Rarity clutched the phone tightly to her ear and closed her eyes. “Listen Twilight, there's something really important I need to tell you. This is really really important.”

“Okay, go on,” said Twilight quizzically.

“I killed somepony,” Rarity squeaked. “More than one, actually. A lot. I – I just had to tell somepony...”

Twilight took a second to respond. “What? Hey, it's loud over here and I've had a little bit to drink. Try to speak loudly and clearly, okay?”

“I murdered a lot of ponies today!” Rarity screamed into the phone. “I killed at least ten ponies! And that was only today! I've been killing for years! It's all me! It's all my fault! I just can't take it anymore! I feel all this horrible pain and suffering and the only thing I can do is make others suffer just as bad!”

Her breathing was erratic. She gulped and squeezed the phone. “I'm in a lot of trouble, Twilight. They're going to come after me any minute now and take me to prison. Up until now I've been avoiding it, but I can't run anymore. All the ponies I've killed, all the murders, they're catching up with me. I had to tell you because you're my best friend and I need your help. Please help me, Twilight...”

Sounds from the party bled through over Twilight's voice. “I'm really sorry Rarity, but I didn't catch much of that. Something about a zebra going to prison? It's a little racist for my taste, but it still sounded funny. You'll have to tell me again in person.”

“It's not a joke!” Rarity cried. “I'm not joking!”

Twilight laughed. “Right, right. I'm sure it really happened, whatever it is. Hey, come over here and join us! We've got another few hours of party left. You can tell me your joke. What do you say?”

Rarity was numb. “Okay,” she said quietly, before hanging up and dropping the phone onto the floor. Totally void of any further thought, she got up and fetched her jacket. The news was still playing when she was prepared to leave. Before she turned off the television, she broke through into a lucid state long enough to hear the announcer say that police were searching for a red male unicorn as the sole suspect of the murders.

“Alright then,” Rarity said to herself. “I guess I'll go to Twilight's.”

At the party, all of her friends greeted her. They smiled and hugged her and shook her hoof. Spike was particularly fond of her surprise appearance. She drank and chatted idly with all of the guests, but continued to feel as if a black hole had appeared where her heart should have been. That's it, she thought to herself. They're not even looking for me. I got away with it. She took a seat next to Twilight, who asked her how she was doing.

“Fine,” said Rarity, smiling politely. “I'm doing just fine.”

“Great!” said Twilight. “Sorry I couldn't hear you over the phone. I'm sure what you said was wickedly funny.”

Rarity took a sip of her drink and relaxed back in her seat. It's pointless, she thought. I've learned nothing. Not from any of this. I've gained no deeper knowledge of myself. No new revelation can be extracted from my confession. It was pointless. My confession has meant nothing. My confession... has meant... nothing.