A She-devil in Plain Sight

Chapters

-Chapter 2-
-Chapter 3-
-Chapter 4-
-Chapter 5-
-Chapter 6-
-Chapter 7-
-Chapter 8-
-Chapter 10-
-Chapter 11-
-Chapter 12-
-Chapter 13- (Re-do)
-Bonus Clop chapter-
-Chapter 1-
-Chapter 9-

-Chapter 2-

When the final bell signaling the school day's end had rung, Rarity had let out a sigh of relief, sure that- after a brief stop at her own house to lunch- she was going to get reprieve from her thoughts. In fact, her mind had stopped to harrass itself, allowing her to think about less distressing topics again.

It helped that, as she walked inside the richly-decorated atrium of Twilight's large villa, in-between walls decorated with antique paintings of men and myths alike, up bronze and red marble copies of statues from a far past time, pottery works shining for the polish- one clearly given often- given to them, up granite stairs with lavishly-decorated sides; Rarity could not help but feel herself overwhelmed by the display opulence, diverting her consciousness from the rotting and noxious thoughts of her sick mind, to the nearly Platonical contemplation of the pieces of fine art in display inside that gallery inside Twilight's house.

However, as Twilight guided Rarity away from her improvised gallery to the solid oak door that divided the rest of the house from the family's library, she felt her attention slipping away from the arts' beauty and going back to the repugnant idea about herself. She clenched her left first and lightly bit her teeth, as she slowly entered in the library, which had the left and the right wall covered in wooden shelves full of books that widely ranged in age, with the odler books far away from the door and the most recent ones very close to the door.

Twilight walked in two steps towards a shelf on her left and, after a few seconds passed in scanning the avaible books, picking up a rather large and thick brown book.

"Here it is something that might handy for your book," Twilight said with a small smile, as she bowed slightly and extended the book to Rarity, who swiftly took in her hands,

"Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Illnesses." It read. Rarity muttered it to herself, before raising her head to face Twilight, a nervous grin on her face.

"T-thank you very much, Twilight," Rarity looked left and right rapidly while she set the book under her right armpit. "I will make good use of this, I promise."

Twilight chuckled, her cheeks reddening somewhat.

"My pleasure. When you will finish your story, will you let me read it?"

"Oh, yes, of course Twilight, I will do it for sure, definitely, absolutely!" Rarity bowed a little. Deep inside, she was torn between the desire to seek an answer to her nagging and worrying question and, thus, taking the book away with herself, and force herself to supress her curiosity and pray that ignorance's bliss was going to strangle and cover her question- thusly resulting in her immediately giving the manual back to Twilight.

"Buutttt..." Rarity said, biting her lip.

"But?" Twilight reclined her head and looked at Rarity. "Is there anything wrong with it? Perhaps you wanted something less complex about the same topic? I can try to look for it, if you want to."

Rarity looked around herself again, hyperventilating and feeling her heart racing inside her chest. The mere thought of discovering an unwated answer to her question or to explain her actual situation to her friend broke the tounge inside her mouth, it created a cold and creeping fire that burnt under her delicate skin, it almost caused her eyes to stop seeing. It also made her start to sweat, to quiver, to turn greener than grass, and, in the end, to almost feel as if she was close to death and going to exhale her last breath.

"Not that revealing myself would end any better." Part of her thought said to herself.

"But one can endure everything. I must brave this, and seek the answer, no matter how nasty the truth will be."

Twilight broke Rarity from her trance, asking "Rarity... are you okay?"

Rarity immediately shook herself all over, blubbering gibberish before looking back at Twilight with an uneasy grin on her face.

"Oh, yes, I am perfectly fine. I was just.... a bit thoughtful. Yeah, thoughtful."

"Well, if you say so..." Twiligth said, adjusting her glasses while frowning a little.

After hastily saying goodbye to Twilight, Rarity had quickly rushed back home with the book under her armpit and oppressing thoguths inside her head. In order to relieve part of her tension, Rarity had quickly showered herself, before covering herself in just a white silky light dress.

Rarity sighed, as she looked at the book on her desk's top. She took a deep breath. Then another, deeper, one. Then she slowly moved her right hand on the cover, gulping as she did so, before slowly opening it to the book's index.

"Oh, silly me. It is in alphabetical order." She stated, chuckling nervously as she did so. After skipping past several pages, Rarity arrived at the "O" section, at which point she started to leaft throught pages with shaky hands, lightly biting her tender lip while she did so. Her mind flashed with images of her fantasies again, calling her to either forget her quest to understand them and just go by their orders, or twisted in way that would have caused Rarity to swear off any kind of pleasant contact until she met with a suitable partner.

Neither worked, however, as she marched forward, slowly but steadily, going past several other pages until, in the corner of her eye, she saw the term she was seeking.

"Pedophilic Disorder."

Rarity's heart started to beat faster, as she slowly moved her eyes downwards to the definition below.

"Diagnostic Criteria:" she read, slowly and nervously, to herself. "First Criterion, over a period of at least six months, recurrent and intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviours involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children. The Second Criterion is, the individual has acted onto these sexual urges, or the sexual urges or fantasies cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulty. Finally, the third criterion is, the individual is at least sixteen years old and at least five years older than the child or children in the First Criterion."

Rarity felt her ribcage nearly caving in on her heart and lungs, as guilt pervaded her. But she forced herself to keep going in her reading.

"Specify whether the attraction is an exclusive or an inclusive type." She read, forcing herself to hold back her tears. "Specify if the individual is sexually attracted by children of their own sex, of their opposite sex, or both. Specify if limited to incest. Specify if violent or non-violent."

Rarity looked up at the ceiling, away from the book.

"Boys? Definitely. Girls? Pretty sure I never had fantasies about them. Incest? I-I do not recall any time I have thought of my younger cousins like that... for the most part..." Rarity fidgeted with her fingers and legs uncontrollably while she evaluated herself, running over months -- if not years -- of recent fantasies in her mind, until, unconsciously, she took the hem of her sleeve into her mouth to slowly suck on it. "Violent? Never!"

She paused, as she pondered on the honesty of that answer, on its actual meaning in the context.

"I mean... I have never thought about beating up a child a-and..." she gulped and cringed slightly. "B-but technically... H-had those been done in r-real life... then it would've been violence... right?"

Rarity massaged her temples, feeling further anguished by her own answers and the ugly truth she was not sure she was hiding or revealing as she went on.

"B-but... I never t-thought of them e-ever suffering, it has always been playing a game or just being rather affectionate while..." she sighed. "Cleaning up... but that can't happen, ever, so, what have I thought about? W-what kind of she-devil am I?"

Rarity slammed the book close and hopped away from her chair, stumbling backwards onto her bed.

She sighed. She sighed again.

Then, she let out a small sob, followed by another and then another, increasing the rate, until she broke into full-on crying, covering her eyes and curling up onto herself.

-Chapter 3-

Rarity slowly moved her palms away from her eyes, uncurling up and laying on her side. She panted quite heavily, emptily staring at the white wall on her right side, as if that- not her own wicked longing- was the source of her own anguish.

The book’s sentences, written in a clinical style suitable for its purpose, gained a sinister and unwanted emotional impact, echoing inside her mind. Lustful memories were resurrected and rescued from a faraway place inside her consciousness, at first casting her as a terrifying wicked abomination, one against all that is good and right, as an abhorrent thing not easily understandable by others, almost like some kind of incarnation of a force of nature. Then, as seconds flew by, the images morphed in look and mannerism, degrading into parodies of themselves, in which Rarity was as disgusting in her actions as much as she was pitiful to look at.

Rarity felt as if she had been covered with a cape made of pure lead, then forced to cover it up, with no hope of release but melting it directly on her skin… and knowing that maybe she was already trying to do so, at least subconsciously.

Rarity gritted her teeth and clenched her fist, trying to stop a few tears escaping her eyes to join the others on the pillow below.

“But, then again, what good does it do, if I stay here crying?” She muttered to herself, looking down at the large wet stain on her lilac pillow. “If it’s only a matter of time… no point in living by crying like a fountain. But if if it is true it can be resisted… Then I am better off trying to distract myself from this topic.”

Calmed down, she sighed deeply and rolled herself on her bed's other side, then slowly got up, walking up to her desk in order to close the book down. Done so, she picked it up and threw it away, close behind the door.

“Let us not remind ourselves of that. I’ve had enough of it today.” she muttered, as she walked towards her bedroom door and out into the rest of the house.

“I shouldn’t try to study, not right now.” she whispered to herself while walking down the corridor, past her sister's and her parents’ bedrooms, towards her destination, a small living room furnished with a pair of black sofas and a glass coffee table, that lead to either another corridor or to a frosted glass sliding door.

“I am better off trying to sew something simple up, just to try to relax my poor nerves.” She muttered to herself. “That, or see if my pacifier can help me this time.”

Even if she wasn’t really sure about the reasonableness of her choice- considered her current mental state- Rarity had decided to quietly call off any socially-related meeting for the next day and, if really needed, the days that were to follow, in order to not accidentally speak about her horrible discovery about herself.

In order to make that day of relative solitude pay off, Rarity had decided to move her studying operation to the public garden close to her house.

Minutes of search later, she finally found a spot suitable for her outdoor studying needs, Rarity slid her light brown bag off her shoulder onto the layer of pebbles ordinately set around the unpainted metal bench, used her left hand to quickly dust away a few shriveled-up leaves and dirt, and then slowly sat down. She took a deep breath, staring off in the distance, past the orderly lines of trees and the small mound before her, onto the gray and lobster pink apartment buildings across the street, enjoying the relative tranquility of the place. Leaves rustled softly, blackbirds and song sparrows sang all together, and the occasional far passerby’s chatter provided a base. Even the sound of cars roaring in the distance felt part of some kind of concert directed by nature and composed by the fates.

“Yes, this will do indeed,” Rarity said after around a minute of listening, moving the bookbag close to her feet and the pulling it up onto her knees, opening it up to reveal the few books Rarity had brought along.

“Philosophy or English?” She muttered, just before snapping her fingers. “English, its test is closer than Philosophy's”

Once the related book- a paperback orange book with a Manierist painting of a man reading a red booklet as a cover, a rainbow of bookmarks between pages accumulated by months of studying it- was out of the rucksack, Rarity opened it at the page she needed to, signaled by a red bookmark with a circle engraved on it.

Skimming over a couple of paragraphs about the author’s literary corpus, Rarity arrived at the part she had left off, reading it to herself out loud.

“In spite of the strong religious undertones of those poems, part of the critical world has identified, inside the peaceful landscape of the monastery’s cloister a repurposed and ‘blessed’ Garden of Pleasure, the same one so accurately described in the author’s previous and most famous creati-”

A shrill cry- its words drowned out to the point of gibberish by the loudness of the voice itself- pierced Rarity’s eardrums, prompting her to snap the book close and to look around her surroundings to search for the shout’s source. The voice called a second time, now low enough for her to understand a few syllables, but not whole sentences. It was enough for Rarity to follow the sound’s direction to see who was shouting with such vigor and such high pitch of voice, however.

On the dirt and pebbles path passing close by in front of her studying spot, somewhat close to a cluster of scrawny poplars with large and rather tall nettle bushes close to their outwards roots, a rather young boy wandered around.

His skin was the same colour as polished turquoise and his locks, shaken by the wind occasionally, had the tint like Sicilian oranges shining under the summer sun. His yellow and black clothes flowed all around him like the sails of a ship following the winds’ capricious will, at times revealing parts of his fair skin.

Rarity, lost the subject of her studying, the severity of her teachers forgotten, ignored the best judgment of moving away from the sight before her. As he scampered around like a tiny shadow from the Elysian Fields, the older girl’s eyes were captured and her thoughts raptured and brought away as spoil by the unaware crying victor.

But, soon enough, her reason ran forward and, in a brief but valiant fight, reclaimed Rarity’s thoughts. But the internal conflict left the feeling of horns and spines flowing inside her veins, causing her to grasp on her chest and deform her visage into an unorderly union of wrinkles and to bend forward.

“W-what am I doing?!” She scolded herself, raising her chest again, the feeling of spines suddenly turning into mere cold in her limbs. “This isn’t my call at all, especially knowing what I am!”

Rarity frowned and, with a bear-like grunt, opened the book again, back at the page where she was studying, but, by the time she had managed to pick up from where she had stopped, a sect of her mind had a retort ready for its counterpart, one that the more she tried to suppress by forcing immersion face-first into literary knowledge, the harder it fought back and tried to push its head out of the waters of literature.

“Please, not right now!” Rarity said in a low voice to no one in particular as she gave a massage to her forehead. “It is hard enough to concentrate on studying, adding such sights only increases distraction, not to mention incorrect and unrightful thought.”

Rarity paused, putting the book down as she looked up back at the boy, who was wandering close to Rarity’s position. Given the fact she was the only one around in the area, probably he was going to ask her for assistance.

Rarity shook her head at the thought. “That can’t happen. With how children are educated to not talk with strangers, it is a miracle social relations have a chance at still existing,” Rarity mused, her head bowed down and her eyes looking aimlessly at the pebbles on the ground. “Then again…”

She looked up at the boy again, and, against her prediction, he was walking in her direction. His head was bowed down, his movements were as clumsily as they were painfully slow, and his whimpers got louder and louder at every step he took towards her.

Nonplussed, she composedly recoiled against the bench’s back support and batted her eyelids quickly.

“Is he really…” she whispered to herself, her gaze fixed onto him.

Seemingly picking up her discomfort and confusion from afar, the young child made a step back and bent his neck forward, turning his back around before going back to the path from where he came from.

“Uhuh. Guess not.” She said, but, before could sigh in relief, Rarity felt something creeping from her generous breast all over her body. It was a sense similar to guilt, mixed with the vibes of an unfinished duty and what one feels in seeing loved ones brushed by harm going by it's way, with traces of the sense of piety brought by the mere vision of little harmless animals and infants attempting to ask for attention.

Both her hands clenched, one over her chest and one close to her right side. One trying to turn the aforementioned emotion into action, the other trying to quell and subside it into nothingness. One wishing to caress the boy, the other wishing to hit its own owner in her delicate face.

“He looks like he’s a lost child, I shouldn't stop myself from helping him get back to his parents.” She said to herself. “But, then again, if that were true, his own parents must be well aware of the fact he lost them, and interfere may make it harder for them to find him, not to mention the amount of extra worry I am going to cause and the problems I would get into for doing that. And this would be true tenfold, if he was not lost, but merely running off due to a tantrum or things like that.”

She looked at the boy again. He shrieked once again, reinforcing Rarity’s desire to get up and try to assist him, but still not enough to actually make her do so.

“We all know what you really hope to get out of it, and you are fooling no one with this ploy.” She said to herself, bowing her head and limply resting her arms in her lap. She then briefly glanced at her book and to her book bag, and the indignity felt towards herself quickly invaded Rarity’s spirit, lightning it up like bushfire.

“Well, not really. The fact I may want to touch him inappropriately does not mean I can’t try to help him out with no string attached or obscure contract clauses. Besides, it not the end of the world if I am mistaken.” she said to herself, as she set her book bag in the bag, closed it and then, with the bag hanging on her shoulder by a black and sand cloth band, rushed forward towards the boy.

He turned around and looked at the older girl coming at him- his eyes glimmering with tears and his face pitifully distorted by his own terror and disorientation- before slowly walking towards him.

“Oh dear, are you lost?” Rarity- forcing herself to ignore the dirt stains her action was going to leave on her socks- bent her knees close to the boy, resting her right hand on her foremost knee and placing her twitching left one close to her side.

The boy nodded and hummed.

“Aaww, I am sorry, little guy. What’s your name? And what’s your daddy or your mommy’s name?”

“My name’s Hummingbird,” he said, his voice cracking, with his hands and head in a priestly position. “My daddy’s name is Daddy, and my mommy’s name is Hoopoe.”

Rarity massaged her chin and hummed, trying to find a quick way to help him out. Considered his language and one of his answers, asking him for phone numbers was out of the question, and probably so was trying to ask him his address- at least a workable one- and the situation had yet to go so dire to call up the authorities.

Half a minute of thoughtful silence later, an illumination hit Rarity, as she remembered about the only open kiosk present in the park.

“Do you want anything to eat or drink?” Rarity said, smiling at Hummingbird. He nodded quickly, his face lighting up near-instantaneously.

“I want flatty!” He shrieked ecstatically as he started to skip in place. “Flatty!”

Rarity stared at him dumbfounded for a few seconds, until she remembered- thanks to nearly-atavic memories of her early childhood- what the word was supposed to mean. She shook her head chuckling.

“Alright, alright, I will buy you some flatbread,” she said, lending her still-twitching hand to him. “But now give me your hand.”

Rarity looked around herself nervously in the attempt to not establish eye contact with Hummingbird, who was eating a piece of flatbread, which was filled with cured ham and soft cheese, by deeply sinking his face into it and taking big bites off it, coating his cheek in a white layer of the caseary product.

Sure, she was the one that had brought it upon herself, and she knew it extremely well. However, at the same time, she felt that trying to take up the arduous challenge was better and more right, than leave a young child such as him crying out for his parents, wandering around the park until he was found by his caretakers, the police… or the worst of Rarity’s lot- the ones that had given up their conscience in exchange of fleeting relief or, worse yet, some kind of twisted power trip, one lasting until either the young boy gave up the ghost or the man was found and arrested and the child was brought out as broken shell- did so.

Rarity shuddered at the mere thought.

“I hope I will be better than that,” she muttered to herself, as she took a tiny sip from her coffee. “I mean, I seized an opportunity like this one just like them, but then again, I have to yet do anything, and maybe…”

All of the sudden, Rarity felt her skirt being pulled by the hem. Slowly putting down her coffee cup onto the designated platter, she lowered her eyes to look at the tugging’s source.

The boy- now doing some kind of little dance on his toes- was looking up at her, one hand over his crotch and the other still clinging on Rarity’s purple skirt.

“Um, nice lady, I need to go,” he said, his voice as squeaky as ever ringing into Rarity’s ears. “Can you please bring me?”

Rarity briefly stared at him before audibly gulping. His simple request echoed in her head, seeping through her entire body, making her feel the warmth- one fiery and noisy, one feeble but fumous- of two fires burning in her chest, telling her two very different things and bringing her to three different conclusions and solutions.
At first she had considered to let him relieve himself in his underwear, thus staining his clothes and making him reek, but leaving Rarity’s conscience as clean as a lily. But, realizing rather quickly how disingenuous, disgusting and despicable that was, Rarity had two possible options left: one was to escort him to the bathroom and assist him as he relieved himself, the other was to bring him next to the toilet and hope he knew how to do it all by himself.

“Well, no point in staying completely idle while deciding.” Rarity whispered to herself, getting up from the chair and grabbing Hummingbird’s left hand and slowly walked him deeper into the kiosk to the mint green sliding door leading to the lavatories- labeled as such because it had been scribbled in cubital characters with a dark red fat marker.

“Alright Hummingbird, do you need me to set you up, or do you think you are big enough to do it all yourself?” Rarity said with a gulp- hopefully an imperceptible one- as she slid the door right-left open, revealing the bathroom’s atrium, a small room with old red ceramic tiles that bore traces of their former luster under the black thin layer of filth scattered around, and a faux-crude ceramic sink with rusty water taps and some niches in the sink’s column, niches clearly caused by pieces getting chipped off either by accident or wantonly.

“I’m big boy, I can do!” Hummingbird said, inflating his chest and revealing a tiny little smirk of pride, as he walked inside the bathroom’s filthy atrium and then into the much cleaner bathroom beyond the hinged door made of unpainted tropical wood. Hummingbird scampered inside it and went to stand by the yellowish white toilet bowl- which was situated between a metal sink with small signs of rust and an essential changing table- and then pulled down his trousers.

Rarity gasped and immediately turned her back on him. She set her right hand over her chest and lightly bit on her lower lip.

“So close…” she muttered to herself, her heartbeat and her breathing’s pace decreasing slowly. “So close to that.”

Soon enough, a tinkling sound came from behind Rarity. As result shook her head, she fiddled her fingers around and she squinted her eyes.

“Don’t look back, oh Lord, don’t look back!” She said, trying to hold off the sudden madness that could seize her- an incautious helper- one to be forgiven, if people knew how to forgive gazing longingly. She feared to stop, and forgetful, alas, on the edge of light, her will conquered, to look back, now, at her Hummingbird.

She clenched her hands in two fists, as her mind flashed with images of her gazing upon his young body and enjoying it without him even suspecting her watch. Her heart clenched, as her mind pushed for bolder and more inconsiderate actions with Hummingbird as focus, planning love skirmishes opposing a well-fitted cohort against defenceless serfs, and trampling sieges against a fortress with an open gate.

At the same time, she considered the consequences of such deeds, giving her a prospect that was not as idyllic as part of herself passed off. After the gazing, the guilt followed. After the skirmishes, it was only matter of time until the fallen servants were going to be properly avenged, and ruin awaited to befall her, if she capitulated his fortress.

Her turmoil stopped as soon as she noticed that the tinkling had stopped, replaced by a loud sound of water being flushed, and the young voice declaring triumphantly. “I'm all done!”

She sighed deeply.

She evaded all mischance, and now she was ready to look behind again, which she did. Hummingbird had just pulled up his trousers and now he was adjusting his shirt to fit it under his trousers and over his colorful underclothing, just before stepping forward towards the sink.

Rarity imitated his action, standing by his side.

“Good boy!” She said in an overly- but not so fake- cheerful manner, as she felt her hands twitching at the thought of the action that was fatally going to follow. “Do you want help in reaching the sink?”

Hummingbird crossed his knees and lowered his head, blushing a little and nodding. Clearly, he didn't like to have his pride of being an older child cut down to its proper size.

Rarity grinned and embraced him around the waist, her hands and arms trembling, her eyes rolling, as she realized just how warm his body was and how his overall body was soft- even under layers of loose clothing- which only piqued the interest of her unwanted guest and worried the beleaguered host.

“No, bad Rarity!” she said while vigorously shaking her head, pushing away the thought before it could develop any further.

She, with her left hand, turned the rusty handle leftwards, before placing the young boy's small hands under the stream of fresh water, allowing him to rub them clean of any filth gathered. Rarity then quickly closed the tap with one of her elbows and set Hummingbird down, who proceeded to use his trousers to dry off his hands.

With a small smile, Rarity looked at him doing just that.

“Yes, he is a cute young boy indeed,” she set her left index finger under her chin, thoughtfully considering her next action.

“Maybe I could be a little more ‘affectionate’ with him? Or should I still avoid to try to start contact?” She whispered, before shrugging, as she realized that no important moral objections were standing in her way this time, and the only feeble principle opposing it was supported only by a nagging minority in the back of her head . “Pet his head and pinch his cheeks? That I can actually do.”

Rarity took Hummingbird’s hand and lead him- who was idly and rhythmically swishing his orange curls around like silky stripes, and lightly humming a musical piece unknown to Rarity- out of the bathroom and back at the outdoor metal, glass and wood table she and him had been sitting at moments before.

Rarity sat down onto the bamboo-poplar chait , lightly pulling Hummingbird’s arm in her own direction in order to get him close enough to do what she wished to do to him.

“You know, you are…” she paused, massaging her upper lip while she held him by the right arm. “A pretty young boy, of an handsomeness not seen everyday.”

Hummingbird reclined his head and tilted it, his eyes wrinkling up, clearly due to confusion, one that made Rarity give herself a harmless but dramatical slap on her forehead, coupling it with a chuckle.

“Oh, never mind, I am just begin fussy about this,” she told him, as she started to use her hand like ivory sail to cross the unusual but silky-soft and almond-smelling orange sea that was Hummingbird's hair. “Nothing to worry about, sweet young one.”

Hummingbird nodded with a small smile. “Okay,” he had simply said, before letting himself to the pleasure given off by his capital sea begin crossed by a magnificent ship such as Rarity’s.

As she kept petting the boy’s head, Rarity felt her previous tension falter and fade away, allowing her to lean back and relax, while listening to the ongoing chatter and birdsongs around her.

“Dream on, oh my dearest boy, dream on, let them say that the ones like you shall always fail, because, I swear, you have already triumphed.” A young man near her sang, his chant deep and nearly lyrical, but oddly not loud. “Dream on, my boy, don’t change any verse of your song because one wanted you to, because this is your life, life is so true, that it’ll sound impossible you’ll have to leave, it’s so mammoth, that when you’ll have to abandon it, you’ll plant a lemon tree, convinced you’ll see it bloom.”

“I know that you’re proud of your situation, o ye turner turner of citri,” a female voice, one Rarity seemed to have already heard before not too long ago, when she took part in the Friendship Games. “But don’t you think it’s inappropriate to flaunt it?”

Rarity froze and frowned. Turner of citri… the name rang something to her ears, but not enough to give her a definite answer.

“Not at all, Sunny Flare, my dear ally,” he said. “I’m not afraid of those self-proclaimed ‘spies’ Canterlot High’s lowlives send me, in order to catch a predator only them can see.”

Rarity, after a couple of seconds connecting the name to the described events, snapped her head around.

“Lemon Turner, is that really you?”

-Chapter 4-

Lemon Turner, a young man with lemon yellow skin, fiery red short straight hair and a beard on his jaw to match; revealed himself. He was dressed in sharp blue clothes and light brown cardigan. He slowly turned his torso around, crossing his legs and leaning against the chair's back as he did so.

"Yes, that would be me, miss," he said smirking slightly towards a restless Rarity. "How may I help you?"

Rarity quickly undid Hummingbird's hug and pushed him away -- which made him let out a small, disappointed, high-pitched whine -- in order to focus all her attention onto the then-only-heard-of young man, her pupils still affected by surprise's invisible belladonna and her hands firmly grasping onto the white wicker of the chair.

"I... did not expect to see you here." Rarity said forcing her facial muscles to grin in order to show amicability, a grin capable of masking her uneasiness. Lemon Turner scoffed and fully turned his chair towards Rarity, soon followed by his friend Sunny Flare.

"Many people have told me that over the past few years," he said, his voice hinting annoyance. "You are not the first and you will not be the last pointing this out to me."

"Hold on a second, aren't you part of Canterlot High or something?" Sunny Flare said, squinting her eyes and pointing at Rarity briefly. "Why would you talk to the guy you know everything about?"

Rarity lightly recoiled confused by Sunny Flare's statement about her knowledge on Lemon Turner's life, which was as deep as a muddy puddle of rain during Summer.

"What are you talking about? I know him only by fame." Rarity said looking around her slowly. "I mean, it is not among the best ones around but still."

"Exactly." Lemon said with small sigh, letting his fringe fall short of his eyebrows. "Knowing how viciously they have tried to make me leave 'their' school, I wouldn't doubt that even outsiders and newcomers of the Canterlot High School would be aware of what I never did. They would have seen the things I fantasize about, met with acquaintances of mine I have never seen and places I have allegedly visited and still visit during days that do not exist on the calendar, and then be told to act accordingly."

"Yeah." Sunny Flare stated while affectedly adjusting her hair with one hand. "At least we try to have a casus offendi, when we do things like that."

Rarity bowed her head and briefly grasped on her chest, before forcing herself to get back at a normal stance and, thus, look right in Lemon Turner's grey eyes.

"Well, while it is true I know you only thanks to a handful of rumors, that doesn't mean I am content with what little of sure I know about you." Rarity said, hesitation peeking out but not fully showing itself in her tone. "I would like to know your side of the story as well, for clarity's sake as well as fairness towards you."

He smirked and made a dramatic gesture with his right hand while seemingly leaning against an invisible chair's back.

"I am glad to hear that you aren't as craving for strife and combat as your fellow students and a few crazed activists are," he said, his voice going back to the vaguely snarky tone it had at the start. "But I am still not quite sure of what you hope to get out of this."

“I do not have any particular goals in mind,” she said. “I am just curious about your situation. Is it true that you are--”

“A child molester?” He said with a bitter chuckle. “If I had a cent for each time I have been accused of being so, my personal wealth would be larger than this country’s yearly expenditure on healthcare.”

He bowed and shook his head.

“No, I am mostly definitely not a child molester, or a ‘kiddy fiddler,’ as the riff-raff loves to call me. I must admit I am a paedophile, thought, which I hope you know is unrelated.”

Rarity instinctively gulped as her white face took a slight crimson hue. She immediately averted her gaze and looked down at the crude ceramic floor below her chair, a small shiver going down her spine. However, just as quickly she had accidentally shown her stance towards it, she silently scolded herself and rapidly went back to her previous position.

“Uh, yes, I am perfectly aware of the difference.” She said uneasily while quickly nodding her head. “Do go on, when and how did you discover it?”

Lemon Turner chuckled loudly, causing Rarity’s heart to clench a little bit.

“I see that the topic interests you quite a lot but you also don’t seem hell-bent on preaching empty words to me,” he said with a small smirk. “I am willing to tell you more, but I would like to know your name first.”

Rarity’s cheeks took a slightly darker shade of red, as she realized that she had skipped a step.

“My name is Rarity,” she said. “Sorry for not telling you sooner.”

Lemon Turner made a backhanded gesture, before getting up and turning the whole chair around to properly face Rarity, and she did likewise to face him.

“If you wish, we could also exchange mobile phone numbers as well.” He said.

Rarity nodded vigorously.

“Oh, yes, of course, just let me take my phone out,” Rarity said, pulling her pink rubber-clad phone out of her bookbag’s internal pocket; bringing it out of its sleep mode and opening up the add new contact screen. “So, what is your number?”

“Oh six one oh one one eight six six one,” he spelled out, using his index and annular joined together to punctuate each number, while Rarity rapidly yet elegantly typed the numbers in. When he was done, he made a fluid hand movement to then point his open palm towards Rarity. “What is yours?“

“That would be…” She took a deep breath to concentrate. “One five one one six nine one seven nine.”

Lemon Turner typed it quickly, bowing his head when he was done.

“So, with that out of the way, Rarity, let’s begin with my personal history.” He said, his tone taking an air of dramatic solemnity and somberness. “My story began around ten years ago --”

He was soon interrupted by Hummingbird’s shrill scream, which made Rarity snap her head around, now reminded about why she was there in the first place.

“Hummingbird, are you alright?” She asked worriedly, only to see him holding the hand of a rather large khaki woman wearing a black and white dress. Her orange hair had traces of black was rather unkempt, and her long pointy nose stood out in her wrinkly face.

“Lookie!” Hummingbird said, his head pointed towards the woman’s face and his right hand pointing at Rarity. “She’s that lady!”

As Rarity watched with bated breath and her heart skipping a few beats, she could hear Lemon Turner talking behind her, saying “Hoopoe, you shall not engage me today! Come on, Sunny, let’s get going before that barrell of sour lard starts to sprout profanities at me.”

However, her attention was mostly drawn by the impending arrival of Hoopoe and by Hummingbird’s enthusiastic pointing in her direction.

“So, you must be that ‘lady’ my son’s talking about so well,” Hoopoe said said, her voice resembling a clay flask begin played by an hyperventilating opera singer. Her tone was one of suspicious inquiry and her eyes -- or what little could be gathered from underneath the wrinkles -- clearly prepared themselves to shoot grapples of daggers.

This caused Rarity to quiver a little, but not visibly waver,

“Yes, that would be me, madam.” She said with a small bowing gesture. “What do you wish from me?”

“Nothing, I just wanted to make sure you actually were a girl and not an effeminate boy,” she said, her tone haughty and acidic, quickly turning around, thusly making Hummingbird spin onto himself and whimper a little. “Boys of your age can’t be trusted in looking over children, chiefly because they have no maternal instinct. If, for whatever reason, they try to help a young child, they should be immediately stopped as they only want to molest them or crap like that, but girls would never do that.”

Rarity’s heart sped up considerably and a chill of dread spread in her entire body. As Hoopoe walked away, Rarity rose her left index, wishing to point out her logic’s flaws, starting from the most important one. But she could not, for her tongue quickly tied itself and her throat created a barricade, prompting Rarity to nearly choke for a few but crucial moments. She felt filled with a cocktail of shock, embarrassment and powerless rage directed towards the woman.

That part of her mind went back to violently invade her mind, disregarding any and all mental defenses. Rarity squinted her eyes closed, clenched her fists, let out a steam-like hiss and strongly bit her lip, trying to think anything but what had just happened and how strongly she was reminded of her desires.

Alas, no matter how valiant her efforts were, Rarity could not stop thinking about Hummingbird’s close call and about what she could have easily done, perhaps, thanks to her gender, begin undetected in doing it and -- as such -- leaving only her and a traumatized Hummingbird as only witnesses. But the price if he -- somehow, someday -- talked about his way too close contact with her was bound to be ruinous, Rarity knew it. She pictured herself with her hands handcuffed going through of a rain of spits, being forced to stand alone at the trial for the lack of people willing to take up her case. She pictured herself being pushed away from his mother, kicked down by her friends and, as last, painful punishment, an inmate enforcing a twisted law where to each crime corresponded an equally grave -- if not harsher at times -- punishment…

Rarity’s eyes shed water, as she rapidly grabbed her book bags and ran away home, her tears held back only by the effort she was taking in running away.

-Chapter 5-

Once she was back home from the park, Rarity proceeded to run into her room and jump onto her bed. Her heart was racing inside her chest, a maelstrom -- one mixing her lust's opinion on the apparently wasted opportunity that was escorting Hummingbird to the bathroom with her morality's reprimands on the mere consideration of the aforementioned possibility and one that showed her a little-variated loop of her fate, should she had caved in the unspeakable in that moment -- ravaged her mind and her eyes produced salty teardrops of angst.

"Why did I have to be like this?" Rarity whispered to herself, crashing down onto her bed with a thump, creating a crater shaped like her onto the eburnean silky sheets, her tears flowing out in creeks down her cheeks. "I don't think my parents have ever touched me there, unless it was necessary, nor I think they would have caused so much grief to somebody to deserve to have a daughter that has seen the light with such a grave flaw. Then what did I do, if I wasn't born like this? What should I do to make this stop?"

A soft knock at the door was heard, derailing Rarity's already-botched train of thought and prompting her to turn her head to the door as quick as a musket's flash.

"Is something the matter sis?" Sweetie Belle spoke -- her tone apprehensive -- from behind the closed door. "Do you anything? A cup of tea, a coffee, something else?"

Opening her mouth, she was going to speak up about the issue that was disturbing her peace and causing her marked distress. Alas, as much as she wanted to talk, her words died on her tongue, her lips and jaw moving but producing no sounds but extremely low hisses and a handful of clicks. Her heart sunk and clenched, her instincts telling her to not speak up about the topic and carry on as normal, while her head pulsed and nearly burnt, as her intellect was ordering her to do the exact opposite and let the truth illuminate Sweetie Belle and the rest of her family. The thunder rang in one of her ears and in the other a harpsichord played. Her right trembled and her left stood still. Her left eyes went foggy in its vision, the other eye captured every minute detail of everything visible from there at relatively great distance.

In this whirlwind, words attacked and stomped onto each other like in a chaotic melee of the eldest times of human history, and different tones of voice tried to lead their subordinate verbs to victory and, thus, vocalization.

"No I do not need anything thanks!" Rarity said in her attempt to escape the torment, which worked because she felt the violent plurality previous sensation rapidly waning and begin replaced by one, single, solitary feeling of averted danger and suffering, that caused Rarity to limply let down her limp and deeply sigh.

“Oh, alrighty then, it’s just that you looked very upset or worried about something,” Sweetie Belle said. Her voice was then replaced by the muffled and waning sounds of her shoes hitting the wooden floor.

Rarity then slowly sat up and turned her head around to take a look at her small personal library on her left side. Scanning from top to bottom, she looked for some delightful readings to get all of her negative thoughts off her chest, until she noticed a book with an ancient white cover showing a few stains of unknown origin, which however did nothing to hide the title, written in black and orange letters.

“Lolita? I like the name,” Rarity said as she got up and stood on her toes in order to reach and grab the book. “This should be a fine read…”

She hopped back onto her bed and laid on her back, opened the book, read a few pages, then proceeded to slam the book shut, an uneasy grin on her face.

“Okay, maybe not…”

A week passed by, but Rarity was still shaken debaclè she had in the park. Not only the memory of Hoopoe haunted her but she herself kept nagging her about the possible ramifications of that day, her conscience calling up the moral law inside her in order to prove how wrong the mere thought was and ordering Rarity to go through an unknown purification process, and her lust dejectedly lamenting the wasted opportunity offered by a child that utterly trusted her for his safety and that had done half of the work for her while urinating.

In fact, it regretted the averted act and longed for another occasion to exploit a child so much, that when lust called Rarity behind its closed doors, it offered this illusion to her senses, repulsing Rarity but not enough to break its spell and stop, and prompting Rarity to feel powerful malaise deep down her shortly after the high. As result of this, she -- not without doubts on its effectiveness and unwillingness to go through it -- decided to lock down Lust’s palace door, the effect of which joined the long list of factors of distress put onto her mind.

Applejack -- wearing a red checkered shirt and jeans -- rapidly walked inside Canterlot High’s music room holding a transparent envelope containing a few sheets of paper in her right hand.

“Hey girls, Ah think got somethin’ nice to practice on today for Pinkie’s party next week, instead of ‘Johnny’.”she said while placing the envelope onto the larger drum of the drum set. This action made attracted everyone's attention; Rainbow Dash stopped idly strumming away on an untuned electric guitar while sitting atop of a low loudspeaker; Fluttershy put her hair comber down onto the stage on which border she was sitting on; Sunset Shimmer closed and folded the newspaper she was reading; and, finally, Rarity was shaken out of her thoughtful silence, the subject of which begin the day ahead of her and the risks involved in talking about her sinister feelings to her friends, if it that was going to bring more benefits than troubles or the -- scary but likely -- vice versa.

Rainbow Dash set her fist under her chin, her head a little tilted. “Ah, really? What’s that? A country song or is it bluegrass?” she said with a little smirk.

“Ah’d like that,” Applejack groaned and glared towards Dash. “but no, Ah know ya don’t like ‘em too much, so Ah chose something y’all might like. It’s a little somethin’ called ‘End of All Hope’ and…”

“Pardon my question and my interruption,” Rarity said, raising her left palm like a schoolgirl in class. “but is not this the song our dear friend Rainbow Dash refused to listen on principle because, sic, ‘that song’s for whiny emos’? Or am I mistaken?”

Rainbow Dash immediately pointer her hand nails in Rarity’s direction, but still looking at Applejack.

“Rares is right about that,” she said. “I mean, the beat’s okay, the singer is good, but the lyrics? They couldn’t get any more edgy and ‘dark’ even if you tried to resurrect Poe to them force him to write this song’s lyrics.”

“Is that really a problem?” Applejack said while climbing onto the stage. “Can’t we just not sing it?”

“And then what will Sunset do, then?” Rainbow deadpanned with both her legs and arms crossed. “Not to mention, how does it sound even remotely close to party music?”

Sunset shrugged

“I don’t mind, really, I can just help out with other stuff or sing something else.” Sunset Shimmer said, putting the newspaper down onto the chair she was sitting on and then walking towards Fluttershy’s loudspeaker, prompting Fluttershy to jump off the loudspeaker and walk close to both Applejack and Rainbow Dash. “Like connecting this to the rest, before you start to strum silence.”

“Oh.” Rainbow Dash said, facepalming for a moment before moving her hand away. “Anyways, I don’t wanna leave Sunset out. So try it again, AJ.”

Applejack sighed as she walked -- her heads down -- towards the instruments’ metal and green plastic locker behind the stage, which was open ajar.

“Ah am never gonna avoid that song, am I?” She muttered, while grabbing the bass. “Wait… where is Pinkie?”

“She’s a bit ill, poor girl caught a nasty stomach bug,” Sunset said, while pointing towards Fluttershy. “But I’m sure Fluttershy wouldn’t mind replacing her.”

Fluttershy let out a light sigh, walking to the locker as well, this time taking two drumsticks out of it. “Oh well, if you want me to I’ll do it,”

“You just reminded me of something,” Rarity said, pulling the music sheets out of her bag before getting up.

“What is it Rarity?” Sunset asked while she stretched her arms. Rarity placed the lyrics sheets onto the main plates of the drum set.

“How is the rest of the party planning going?” Rarity asked while she mentally numbered and reorganized the papers in the correct order. “Have all the invitations been sent out already?”

“Pretty much.” Sunset Shimmer said, while she was bent close to a low speaker, attaching the microphone to it. “My printer ran out of ink at the last few, so I’ll have to redo them. However I’m pretty sure we’ve already sent the ones I managed to make.”

Rainbow Dash nodded with a small smile, briefly placing her closed right hand on her inflated chest.

“True that!” Rainbow Dash said with a hint of glee. “And I did that in two hours flat!”

Applejack’s eyes widened as she also strengthened her grip onto her bass’s black handle.

“Everyone on Pinkie’s list?!” She said alarmed “Even Sunny Flare and that sick bucko Lemon Turner? Are ya mad?”

“I was this close to not deliver them anything,” Rainbow Dash gestured with her fingers to illustrate her point. “but Pinks just insisted to invite them. She said to put aside such differences and let them enjoy our company.”

“As if they deserved it!” Applejack scoffed and snarled. “If either of them comes to the party...”

Applejack hit her own hard with one of her own fists. Rarity felt her heart sinking at the sight.

“Especially if Lemon Turner briefly stops to look for child porn and touch kids, to instead come to this party,” Rainbow Dash said. “he does not deserve anything but to be beaten to a pulp and his remains burnt!”

“Ah agree!” Applejack shouted, shaking her fist in the air, a gesture that -- coupled with Applejack’s violent words -- caused Rarity to nearly panic at the mere thought of what could happen to her if she were to be discovered by her peers, the only bastions of hope eft begin Fluttershy and Sunset Shimmer and her own oratory capabilities.

“That’s a bit much, isn’t it? I mean, in hindsight and considered the tight surveillance he’s undergoing, it’s extremely likely he never acted upon his desires,” Sunset Shimmer said with a shrug, catching the glares of both Applejack and Rainbow Dash. “but I can’t say for sure if he owns child porn, sadly. But, even if he didn’t offend in any way, he needs to be sterilized for the sake of himself and the community as whole, maybe get a sentence if the volume was really big, but surely not descend into mob justice.”

Applejack flipped an invisible table over in Sunset’s direction.

“Oh, yeah, sure, ya can get child porn just about everywhere and any hour.” she said, shaking her front limbs wildly. “Of course only now sick sub-humans like him cry that they can’t help it and whine for acceptance while they keep touching little kids!”

“Applejack, please,” Sunset Shimmer said after rolling her eyes, her voice expressing annoyance and her forehead’s skin morphing its form in a terraced hill’s. “Physicians back at my homeworld figured ponies attracted to foals didn’t necessarily violated or molested them, and this was way back then, and I mean ‘bronze age’ times. Even if there are major biological differences, psychologically ponies and people are extremely similar.”

“Well, maybe that’s how it works for y’all ponies,” Applejack drooped her shoulders and leaned forward towards Sunset Shimmer. “but here it ain’t so. I mean, where did you ever heard of a pedo that doesn’t molest children here?!”

Sunset bit her lip just like the onlooking disturbed Rarity bit her own. She shook her fists and hissed, before taking a deep breath.

“This is one of these times I would like to find a way to squeeze stubbornness out of you,” she said, turning around towards Fluttershy. “Fluttershy, who do you agree with? What is your position?”

“I-I… I dunno." Fluttershy -- who had been standing by the drums for all that time -- said unsurely, dropping her drumsticks onto the floor and following them with her head. “I don’t think that it’s an illness, but, at the same time… I cannot believe anyone, knowing the risks and its consequences and having a good life, would ever consciously choose to make love to children or see kids go through horrible things. There must be a trigger that makes some people try to molest children. But what kind of despair could that possibly be?”

“Weaksauce creeps that can’t get a date nor a life?” Rainbow Dash snarked with her arms crossed, while sitting on the stage’s edge. “Out-of-control pervs that have run out of things to hump?”

Sunset Shimmer groaned and Fluttershy recoiled a little, while Rarity gripped onto the closest object available in order to not disorderly flee right during that rather heated moment.

“I’m right with ya Dash!” Applejack said while punching the air and whipping her hair. “Ah am sorry to say that Flutters, but ya aren’t making any sense at all.”

Rainbow Dash nodded towards Applejack, while Sunset Shimmer let out a deep sigh.

“Now, ‘Cause we’re already there,” Rainbow Dash said, turning towards Rarity. “I’m curious about whatcha think about this, Rares.”

All of the sudden Rarity felt the tension that had been building up to that moment fall and bury her like an avalanche on the high mountain peaks . She bent over with a whimper, feeling her heart speeding up in terror. Her friends’ stances on her condition and the ones affected by it did not prospect anything but angst and desolation -- if not outright violence in a couple of cases -- and, now she was being questioned about it.

She fidgeted her fingers and looked around her, cold sweat running down her face and soaking up her clothes, her hands cupped in the middle of her chest, her eyes darting and shifting focus at lighting speed and her thighs trembling. She was nervous, but she had to stay calm in order to escape that situation.

“I have no idea, really.” Rarity said, forcing herself to sound calm. “I… don’t really think about it.”

Sunset Shimmer, Fluttershy and Applejack promptly turned around with their heads tilted, staring at Rarity as if she had entered in the room by crawling out of the ceiling.

“What’ca mean?” Applejack asked.

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash said. “I don’t think about it all the time either, but I do have an opinion about it.”

Rarity felt her own tongue fall wither and die in her mouth.

She couldn’t do it.

She had to run, and fast!

“Excuse me, I have… to empty myself.” Rarity said, getting up and running away like an hare from a bloodhound, her destination begin her own house.

“I cannot keep this up!” Rarity said to herself, rapidly running down the school’s halls leading to the exit. “No one will stand by me and help. Not my family, not my friends, not society, not the law… no one! If my life is just going an agony because I am an unwanted beast, why should I care about my future? No, I must go forth and remove myself!”

Then, as she arrived in the schoolyard, she started to think about the method she was going to use to remove herself from the world of the living and, thus, shake hands with her illustrious ancestors.

-Chapter 6-

The hot water's steam was wafting through the air from the white ceramic bathtub clad with a sheet of bronze. The light brown door leading to the rest of the currently-silent house -- just like the window above the bathtub -- was closed but not locked, in order to allow easy access to the aftermath to her family's members. The green toilet's lid was lowered and, on top of it, Rarity's clothes were neatly folded and stacked up in a pile, while her pink underwear and her bra stood at the toilet bowl's base. Rarity, completely naked, lightly massaged her left forearm with her right hand while holding her dad's razor -- one with an ivory handle finely engraved with his initials and a thin sharp blade made of stainless steel -- in her left hand.

"This is it. End of the line for me," she muttered to herself, switching hands to massage her other forearm. "Soon I shall take my own life and remove myself from this world, before my hands manipulate and invade what men and nature forbade to... before a child curses my name because I have stolen their most cherished possession in order to satiate my lust."

She slowly raised her left leg and dipped her foot into the hot water, the pinpricks of sudden warmth melting into a generalized sense of heat that, however, did not deter Rarity from fully immersing her knee into the water.

"Farewell, oh my dear friends, bringers of joy to me and many others, your faith was misplaced." she muttered, now moving her right leg in, the heat diluting itself now. She slowly sat into the water, the hot water going just above her breasts. "Farewell, sister, I was born with a flaw that was going to overshadow every virtuous action of your own. Farewell, parents, your life's seeds were damaged and faulty, but it is me the one that has to pay for it."

She then brought her left arm out, firmly holding onto the razor with the other hand.With her hands trembling, she moved it closer and closer, biting her lip lightly as she tried to resist her reluctance to off herself.

"It is the right thing to do..." she said to herself as she got closer and closer to do the nefarious action. "Yes... it is just what is right."

The cold steel of the blade touched her much warmer snow of her skin, sending a shiver down her spine.

"One last action... then, it will be all over." She whispered, her brain telling her arm to cut in and pull, in order to start the voluntary fatal bloodletting.

Except she could not. Her hand shook, her breathing intensified, her skin increased its ability to feel temperature and started to pull out goosebumps, and her heart briefly stopped, as her mind kept telling her to go forth.

Her mind was being oppressed at the mere thought of what could follow her departure from this world: oblivion could be awaiting just as much as hell could, and heaven could have had a seat ready along with purgatory and the aether-above-ground, and the mere thought that the first and the last could be the only thing following her extreme and desperate gesture increased her reluctance to follow through her decision to end her own life.

However, despite it being a major source of anguish and regret, she was not quite deterred yet.

"I do not want to this..." she muttered "But I have to."

She fiddled her fingers around the handle.

"I have to because... because..." she paused, mumbling, her heart beating at a fast pace. "Because people will tell me to, because I am different and incorrect... because I am the only one and I am standing alone against the world."

She shook her head, a surge of indignation blitzing through her entire body, prompting her to violently throw the razor away against the door.

"Lies!" she shouted, tears forming her eyes. "I know one that is like me, I know one that can help me and deliver myself from this senseless self-slaughter! If there’s one able to understand me, that would be him!"

She jumped out of the bathtub and, still drippingly wet, ran into her room and grasped onto her cellphone. She frantically browsed through her contacts until he found his name, at which point she immediately called him. As her phone attempted to connect with Lemon Turner’s while producing a digitalized trill, Rarity’s eyes produced a concert of sobs, sighs and whimpers.

“Hallo, Lemon Turner of the house of Citruses speaking, what is your wish?”

Rarity almost recoiled at hearing his voice over the phone.

“Lemon Turner!” Rarity shouted, her weeping briefly stopping. “You have to help me, I have just attempted suicide because…”

“Oh dear,” he said, his voice expressing worry behind its apparent stoicism. “What caused it? Are you alright?”

“I am naked but unhurt,” she said. “and I’ve tried to kill myself because…”

She loudly gulped, her heart starting to race.

“I am a paedophile, and my friends… talked…” she broke down crying again as she remembered the events that had happened earlier that day.

“It’s alright, I do understand that, but, please, for the love of everything that is good and holy, do not pull that off.” He said, his tone hurried. He briefly paused and then sighed deeply. “Your life has much more value, than a bunch of people’s opinion. Believe me, off yourself isn’t the solution to your problem.”

Rarity gathered her strength to speak up in the midst of her distraught wail. “T-then what’s the solution? My friends said they’d kill anyone that dares to be like me and you. Even if they won’t shed blood, they’ll not accept me. So what’s the solution to friends and family possibly ditching you like a trash bag on the street? Wha--”

“Listen, I have been through this and, I swear on my allegedly non-existent soul, how you are does not matter to your parents and your siblings.” He interrupted, speaking sternly this time. “They may not believe it, they may accept, they may try to cure and fix it, they may curse themselves and their genes or their abilities, but, for as long as you remain pure of any crime, their love will and shall never decrease. And, should you prove that they had no influence in making you a child lover, then they will also lose any semblance of guilty towards themselves.”

Rarity stared at the phone whimpering, her tears’ stream dwindling. She was feeling her heart beat and pulse more energetically and she felt her breath free, as her blood seemingly renewed itself on the spot and carried to her entire body a sensation thought to be long-forgotten -- or, at very least, not likely to return since the day of her fatal discovery -- as her mind imagined Lemon Turner’s words coming true.

The image felt so… plausible. Rarity now had difficulties in imagining Sweetie Belle or her parents rejecting her wholesale. She could not imagine that, for an error in her brain, the glimmering legacy of her father and her mother could be given up with no benefit for her, or her begin forced to prepare her luggage and cases for a grim and endless trip out of her home. None of that sounded any more plausible than Arezzo’s chimera mutating its bronze into flesh.
She let out a bellows-like sigh.

“And so… even if I lose all my friends, I’ll have my family…” Rarity muttered to herself as she swiftly took the phone in her right hand.

“T-thank you…” She whispered after couple of sniffles. “Thank you very much.”

“It is no trouble at all. After all should bring help to each other.” he said. “Am I right?”

Y-yes… you’re right..” she said, as the movement of her should quelled but did not fade, as she realized that she still had to find a way to answer to the pressing question of her friends. However, she silently meditated about it, if only her family had to know, or if her friends -- her companions and comrades during world-saving fights -- had to be informed about her situation and its precarious state that put her in need of an invisible leash.

On the one hand, there was no perceived reason to let them know and the amount of potential misery brought by such a reveal was too large to be ignored, thusly making it a needlessly risky and painful choice.

On the other hand, its discovery at an inopportune time could only mean that any backlash coming from her friends could only be amplified by the secrecy Rarity gave to it all, which in turn meant that the truth was going to be taken as a lie on her innocence, in turn leading to her to be abandoned and her going through months upon months of pointless distress brought by the law begin called incorrectly. Trustful secrecy, brought by years of secret-keeping between friends, could only play in her favour, for she could reliably hope that her friends were going to keep it hushed around the ones outside their circle.

As she thought this, she did not let out a word, leaving an awkward silence on the phone line. After a few minutes, Lemon Turner spoke up again.

“If you really want to see me and talk… just come over at my house and ask for me. I live at the number ten of Ceramic Hill, and it’s a rather big villa, so it is impossible to miss it.”

Rarity nodded, sniffling.

“A-alright…” she said in a whisper-like tone. “I will keep that in mind.”

She then closed the call, slamming the phone down and jumped off her bed. She ran back into the bathroom to grab her underclothing, went back into her room and -- after furiously grabbing a pair of black pajamas and an heavy enough coat -- and then she quickly dressed herself up.

“I may look a little indecent,” she muttered to herself, as she pulled up her panties. “But desperate times call for desperate measures, I need to seize the opportunity and I’m sure he will not mind it too much.”

Six minutes of scooter driven uphill later, Rarity was standing by the striped orange and yellow metal gate of Lemon Turner’s house in front of the doorphone -- which was lodged inside a niche of a faux-marble ionian-styled column -- tapping her feet onto the ground and fiddling with her fingers as she waited for him or whoever lived with him to answer to her doorbell buzzing and allow her to enter and unload whatever stone was left on her chest.

“Come on, come on,” Rarity whispered in anticipation every few seconds. “Answer it!”

After what felt like an eternity in waiting, loud static came from the doorbell, and Lemon Turner’s voice, which suffered of radio distortion, came out of it.

“Hallo, who is there?”

“It’s me, Rarity.” She said, waving a little. “Please open your door, I would really like to have a chat with you.”

“Oh…” he said. There was a distant clicking sound, followed not even a second later by a loud bang coming from the gate. “Just push it forward to enter in my abode’s garden.”

Rarity put her arms forward and pushed as hard as she could, letting out a soft grunt when she managed to get it to open up onto the garden -- which was a rather large lawn, with red and black stones paving the path to the house, an acacia-topped gentle slope at the path’s right side and a small stagnant pond with a couple of lily pads on its left side.

Halfway through the path, the white door was opened, revealing Lemon Turner, who was wearing a purple shirt over a white sweatshirt and bordeaux trousers.

“Come in!” He gestured towards Rarity with his right hand. “I would hate to make you wait for me outside.”

Rarity sped up and -- as he jumped out of her way -- hopped inside the atrium of his house. It was a small corridor, its walls decorated with copies of mannerist portraits, impressionist landscapes and baroque still lifes, its porphyry floor covered by a carpet -- made of multicoloured threads finely woven to make stylized floral patterns and geometrical designs -- one that stretched up to the staircase awaiting at the end of the corridor, and three bronze ceiling candelabras repurposed as lamps hanging and swinging slightly.

Rarity briefly stopped to take a look at a copy of a Tiziano painting, before shaking her head and rushing forward, following Lemon Turner close behind as he turned right and entered in the circular living room -- a room which had a style that was not worse in splendor and pomp compared to the atrium.

“Be seated.” Lemon Turner said with a bow, gesturing to point at an empire-styled leather armchair in front of a coffee table with curved legs made of oak, and bronze edges keeping in place the green glass that made the table’s top.. “Would you like anything to drink? A spot of tea? A nice cup of Kaffa’s drink?”

“Kaffa’s drink?” Rarity said somewhat puzzled as she sat down on the armchair.

“More commonly known as coffee,” he said while turning around. “Sorry for the confusion. Anyways, do you wish for anything to drink?”

“Oh, you’re just too kind. I guess I could use some tea,” she said as she affectedly gestured with her hand in front of her mouth. “If it is possible, I would like a variety with a delicate taste, please.”

“Right away!” Lemon Turner nodded and immediately started to walk towards the kitchen, returning only ten minutes later -- ten minutes Rarity used to open up her coat a little bit and to gaze upon the works of art hanging or standing around her.

He returned with a small round tray made of weaved white and black wicker, two Pompeian red steaming tea cups and a silvery sugar bowl decorated with floral motifs and a sitting caryatid atop of it. He set the tray onto the coffee table, before sitting down as well.

“Earl Grey, hope you like it, Rarity.” Lemon Turner said as he mockingly dusted his shirt’s chest. “Do you want some milk or some lemon as well?”

Rarity nodded in denial, as she firmly grabbed the cup with her shaky fingers, trying her best to not show mindfulness, as she then crossed her legs.

“Thanks. Now, forgive me for my hastiness, but I came here to ask you something,” Rarity took a quick sip, as she mentally prepared herself to ask that question.

“Oh?” He said, pouring sugar and stirring it in his cup with the accompanying spoon, before looking up at Rarity. “What is it? Something regarding your paedophilic feelings, I take?”

Rarity gulped and nodded. “Yes, that is why I am here in your home, Lemon Turner. You are the only one I know with my same… problem, and I just needed to know how did you cope with certain parts of this.”

He loudly chuckled and took a big sip out of his cup, before looking at Rarity’s eyes.

“Well, I do not consider this identity of mine much of an illness, but, in spite of that, I guess my experience can help you.” Lemon Turner crossed his legs, holding the cup close to his lips with his right hand, resting his left on the armrest. “So, what do you wish to know?”

“I-I wanted to know… how do you make friends after that?” She said, shivers going down her spine as she forced herself to let that out. “Better yet, how do I keep them, if they catch me?”

“Normally I would say that you should not let them know, as it would bring you more misery than joy,” he said, glaring at the air and letting out a small growl. “However, I also know the great challenges you have faced together and just how strong your camaraderie is, which makes me think that your reveal, unlike mine, would benefit you in the long and short term.”

“Really?! You think so?” Rarity said with widened eyes. “Do you really think that?”

He nodded.

“Yes, I do think so. You see, my ‘friends’ were more like my satellites, staying close to me so as long as I was popular and able to give out favors and money.” Lemon Turner sighed. “I think I don’t have to say what happened afterwards again.”

Rarity nodded with a sigh.

“That was so unjust towards you… I am so sorry for you…” She said, her eyes briefly pointing down at the floor.

“No need to.” He said, brushing the armrest dismissively. “You had little to no way to influence the events yourself.”

Rarity hummed and nodded, taking little sips from her cup, as she gathered the courage to ask again.

“So, how do you think I should tell them that?” Rarity asked.

“Invite them somewhere and offer something. Maybe an ice cream, maybe a cocktail, maybe a perfume sample, maybe a hamburger… in any case, something pleasant,” he said. “And, try to sweet talk them a bit first. Maybe casually mention secrets, let the discussion flow, then talk about your deepest one; or maybe mention the length of your friendship as something that serves as grant against the brunt shock of it, or… I don’t really know, I never talked about it really, the people I have met with either figured them out themselves or aren’t aware of it.”

Rarity looked up again with slightly widened pupils.

“How?” She asked. “In fact… how did you live through this for years?”

“Do you really wish to hear my life story? The whole ordeal?” he asked somewhat confused. Rarity nodded, and he immediately downed the tea in one go -- which caused him to pant a little and flap his hand his hand, in order to cool down a little -- before starting to speak. “I guess I can trace this thing of mine to my beginning of the vichian Age of Heroes: while most of my fellow students and my companions were rather busy singing praises of varying level -- from sublime odes to their beauty to lewd chants referring to their purported sex appeal -- to young ladies of our age and their phantasmagorical sex lives were a common discussion topic, I was mostly untouched by this sweeping thoughts, for while the female form enticed me, I preferred it to be one less affected by hormones or one never touched by the aforementioned. I remember sitting near public playgrounds often, watching children play in the faint hope of having a glimpse of their underclothing or their naked bodies, and I remember not quite understanding why people looked at me sideways, or why my companions joked about it.”

He took a deep breath, slumping on the chair and Rarity followed to bend forward towards him, as if she was a metal objected attracted by a magnet.

“Then what happened?” she asked with a hint of anxious curiosity.

“Then, just as I was starting High School, I read a novel,” he said. “One that had a protagonist reflecting my feelings rather well, and one telling me that those thoughts were illicit and morally bankrupt. I got scared and browsed through every possible source of information I could get my hands on, until, two years later, I discovered that I was a paedophile. Overtaken by terror, I did the unmendable mistake of assuming that the only hated paedophiles were the ones that had sex with children. I spoke to one of my classmates, Roseluck, about my issues, citing a non-existent cousin as a way to make it more poignant, but all I got was scorn and hatred, also fueled by rumors of my incestous tendencies that I could have never had due to the lack of suitable love interests in that age range. I got spat upon, insulted…”

He paused, clenching his fists onto the armrests and gritting his teeth. Rarity recoiled onto the armchair to the point of making its wooden feet to rub against the floor with a soft screech.

“Some even had the gall to think that mob justice was going to do any good, starting a brawl with me. I fought valiantly, but I was one versus four mindless drones and I had to capitulate and be brought to hospital with one crippled leg, nearly cut-off gonads and a blood-stained hand, one that had managed to destroy the tendons of a worthless clod’s ankle and had nearly flayed another one’s belly. While the law sided with me and got the four of them committed to the Juvenile Prison to be seen only in a decade, the moral victory was not nearly enough to make my moral go up, nor it did improve my relations with my schoolmates.”

Rarity, biting her lip while listening to it, got up and walked close to Lemon Turner, embracing him and pressing her cheek against his.

“Pity that you had to go through that,” Rarity said, shuddering at the image she had created to herself, the pain and the utter humiliation and risk of death that involved... “I dare not to think how badly it would ended for me, had it happened to me. I hope this will never happen to you ever again.”

Lemon Turner let out a sigh and exchanged the embrace, silently resting in her arms for a few seconds, before delicately undoing it.

“Thanks, Rarity.” He said, sighing deeply. “But what’s done is done. Let me continue.”

Rarity went back to sit down on the armchair, sadly nodding.

“By the time the ‘sicko pedo’ leaflet campaign had started, I had gone through several psychologists I had contacted in order to help me to cope with both the harassment and paedophilia.” He said. "It turned out, aside from being the only ones capable of convincing Principal Cinch to close an eye over my lack of experience with a bow and my abysmal grades in Sciences by making up speeches about my excellent skills in humanistic matters, they weren’t useful at all. While I was shaking for the sake of my soul and my safety, they were trying to skimp around or ignore the issue, citing emotional immaturity and adolescents phases as reason for my attraction to children. It felt as if the doctors were using my mind and my life as pastime for whatever matter they deemed more important, rather than being the job they elected themselves to do when they got a degree.”

Rarity nodded along.

“When my transfer was finalized and I had ditched the flashy and much-desired fashion designer clothes in favour of an austere and elegant uniform, I met with people that actively tried to put the historical philosophies in practice, rather than just repeating their concepts to never recall them again, and the ones that enticed me the most were the Vichians, students with little to no skills in mathematical subjects, focusing their efforts on the ones they deemed the only true sciences, namely History, Philosophy and Languages. By joining them and intensifying my philosophical studies, I discovered Plato’s words on the matter of love between a man and a child. Even if many had tried to bend the translation to deny it meant to say it, many forgot that the original text talks about love wasted on a love interest that may or may not turn evil, rather than about how awful it was for the target. I also started to read ancient poetry and, soon enough, it became clear to me that my own feelings were as strong as anyone else’s. That I was not excluded from love, but merely limited in its manifestations, and that romance was not a distant dream, but just as likely and sweet as the one with a woman. No one outside here will believe me, of course, but there's always hope that, one day, this bigotry towards my kin will set too.”

He created a fist with his hand as he started to bellow in triumph. “It was then that I decided to go up to the psychologists I was entrusted to, telling them that I was not their little research monkey boy, that I was not going to suffer humiliation and pain because they felt they had more important matters, that I was not going to be fooled out of my money twice.”

Rarity cracked a little smile, just before slowly realizing fully what he had said, which caused her smile to turn somewhat uneasy.

“Um… well, good for you.” She said. “I think you knew what oyu were doing. How are you doing now?”

Lemon Turner smirked and chuckled.

“Nowadays? Nowadays I enjoy peace and quiet of the likes only my early childhood had.” He said proudly. “I have loyal friends, I have stability brought by controlled indulgence, I have a good scholastic record… In short, everything I have desired in the past and I only have matters to look forward to..”

Rarity nodded, got up and stretched her hand out, feeling somewhat uncomfortable with his opinion on himself, but still happy with her decision.

“Thanks a lot for your time Lemon Turner,” she said. “I wish you best of luck with your endeavours and everything else.”

And I wish you luck with your talk with your friends,” he said, shaking Rarity’s hand. “God only knows how much you are going to need it.”

-Chapter 7-

Rarity was walking down her town’s main street, headed towards the ice cream shop where she and her friends had agreed to meet that afternoon, allegedly to relax after an intense week at school.

“Let’s go over our plan once more,” Rarity muttered to herself, pulling her deep red coin purse out of her purple bag with zig-zagging lines of sewn-on light blue rhinestones on the sides and one large bronze diamond-shaped clasp as closure. She poured the coin pursue’s contents onto her left hand and mentally counted them all, realizing she had enough money for get seven medium-sized ice cream cones.

“First, I shall declare my intention to offer the ice cream. Then I will try to find a table in a corner of the shop, so that no-one else can hear me, then I will engage in the chatting, which will not be difficult considered that I have the topic ready, I shall then try to steer the conversation towards our secrets,” Rarity muttered as she poured the coins back into the pursue. “Then mention that I shall share my biggest secret, beg them to keep secrecy and, finally…. Say it.”

She let out a deep sight at the last part, just before raising her head and speeding up her pace in order to not be late to the appointment she had organized herself and, thus, the chance to get some of her anxiety off her chest.

“Thanks again Rarity!” Sunset Shimmer said as she sat down on a red metal chair, resting one arm on the green table before her -- a cone topped by the red of the strawberry, the yellow of cream and sprinkled with white-and-black chocolate chunks in her right hand.

“It is no problem at all, Sunset,” Rarity said, slowly picking up small licks of her vanilla ice cream with small pieces of candied fruit of many colours cream from the cup with the provided plastic green spoon. “I just felt it was due for today.”

As she licked away part of of melting ice cream, Sunset looked with her head a little tilted and a small frown at Rarity, which caused the latter to shake her head and force a grin on her face.

“Oh, nevermind that.” Rarity said. “I just wanted to make a nice gesture for you all.”

Sunset nodded and turned away from Rarity to face Twilight and Rainbow Dash -- who were still at the counter, arguing between each other -- just as Pinkie Pie, Applejack and Fluttershy took their seats as well.

“What’s the problem Dash?”

Rainbow Dash turned around annoyed.

“Nothing major, Twilight’s trying to pay the exact amount in dimes and she’s taking forever!”

Twilight turned around glaring at Dash as she set a handful of small copper coins onto the counter, where the cashier could get them. “Well, sorry if I am trying to be precise.”

The cashier let out a growl, rolling his eyes skywards as he rapidly grabbed the dimes and put them inside the cash register below the white stone counter.

“Look, it’s fine even if I miss five cents, alright? Now take your ice cream before it fully melts.” He said, handing the receipt with one hand and -- after taking them off the nearby cone-holders -- the two cones, held with mastery in-between his index and middle finger and his anular and small finger.

Twilight took her cone -- one filled with pine nut and mint cream -- and went forward to sit down as well, while Dash -- after almost violently grabbing her own ice cream away -- stood upright besides the table, one hand on the table and the other firmly gripping on her chocolate and strawberry-filled cone.

Rarity took another spoonful of ice cream, slowly savouring its taste, before clenching her free hand into a fist and took quick and steady breaths, whispering a few words in preparation, carefully listening in order to find an opening.

“I seriously do not understand why he had to be so rude towards me,” Twilight muttered dejectedly as she quickly licked all around her cone’s circumference. “I just wanted to make sure he was getting the exact amount!”

“You were holding up the line Twi,” Rainbow Dash said, taking a big lick off her cone “Anyone would’ve gotten antsy after a while.”

“Still, they could have tried to be nicer,” Twilight said. “But, oh well. Guess that it happens when you are used to being extremely precise.”

“Yer honesty is lovely, but not needed, really.” Applejack dryly stated, taking big spoonfuls from her vanilla and pistachio mixture. “Peeps don’t really care most of times, so don’t cha worry. ‘Sides, better than freeloading.”

“Like somebody here who hardly has money for stuff,” Rainbow Dash shifted her gaze onto Pinkie Pie, who was busy taking rather large spoonfuls of her chocolate and sultana ice cream,topped with aztec cocoa, cookies and caramelfrom her small cup. She stopped eating looked up, her upper lip and cheeks stained by the aforementioned flavours’ traces.

“I just keep spending lots of money ‘cuz I see lots of stuff I want for me and one of my friends, like sometimes I tell myself ‘No you do not need that Pinkie’ but then I think ‘I have enough money so why not?’ and then buy it and then I find moths flying outta my wallet and…

“We get it, Pinks, you’re bad with cash because you spend it like water for gifts,” Rainbow Dash said while setting her left hand over Pinkie’s mouth -- staining her hand in the process -- and glaring at her a little. “It’s no secret at all.”

Rarity perked up, as she rose up her left arm, setting its elbow onto the table and holding up her index finger up.

“Just like it’s no secret to us six that you nurture interests for a man competing in the football team,” Rarity said rapidly, tension building up in her chest. Rainbow Dash glared at Rarity, while the others proceeded to look at her confused. “Or, well… pretty much anything else we have said between ourselves while invoking confidentiality.”

“Uhm? And so?” Applejack asked.

Rarity’s cheeks reddened and she let out a small whimper, her courage dwindling as seconds passed by while being stared like that by her own friends. She had to act and speak fast.

“I have a matter that I desperately need to lay out for you, for it is of utmost importance and gravity,” Rarity said, her eyes shifting around the room to find a way to escape. “For a while, I have been harbouring…. Shall we say, desires that are causing me quite a lot of distress. Due to their nature, I am going to need your collaboration in keeping this from spreading outside our little circle, as such, I want you to say…”

“Ya want us to promise we won’t tell a soul ‘bout something botherin’ you?” Applejack asked as she cleaned her face with her forearm. Rarity nodded in affirmation. “Well, then, ya have mah word on that.”

“Mine too.” Rainbow Dash said.

“Um… yes, I guess…” Fluttershy whispered.

“Sure thing Rara!” Pinkie said, whipping her empty cup up and sprinkling droplets of melted ice cream all over her shirt.

“But of course Rarity!” Sunset Shimmer said with a small bow of her head.

“What goes into my head will not leak!” Twilight stated with a hint of pride.

Rarity took a deep breath, trying to convince herself of her friends’ sincerity and their ability to tolerate her situation. She rejected her reservations as hard she could, gulping loudly.

“It is good to see you are willing to do this for me.” Rarity said, lowering her head, before rising it again, looking at the table’s center. She gulped one last time, before speaking. “I-I have urges towards b-boys... young ones, really young, like… Grade School-age young. I had never quite realized what it meant, nor I knew what… this really was. But I know what is it now: it is paedophilia, it is mental illness, and there is no cure.”

Rarity glanced at her friends and she saw them with mouths agape and eyes fixated on her. Reluctantly, she went forward in her talk.

“I-I h-have the luck to have friends whom I can fully trust and can help me in finding ways to limit this, before I do something stupid.” Rarity paused to take a deep breath, her right hand held high as she did so. “An acquaintance of mine and one of your enemies, has made clear to me that not many people in my same situation can claim to have such a luxury… and…. and some of them will never attain it ever again. So, please, please, help me: there is my soul and a little boy’s childhood and sanity at stake, none of them has to be sacrificed!”

Sepulchral silence followed Rarity’s words in that remote corner of the ice cream place. She started to quiver and shake a little, lightly biting her lip as she prepared herself for a verbally violent reaction.

“Of all situations I thought I could find myself in…” Twilight said, adjusting her glasses and forcefully grinning while averting eye contact. “I… didn’t consider this to be among the most likely outcomes.”

“Oh my…” Fluttershy quietly said while averting her gaze.

“Whaaa?!” Applejack interjected, her mouth still agape and her eyes fixed onto Rarity as if they were replacements of the real optic muscle made out of glass.

“Rares, who’s the guy that put that in your head?!” Rainbow Dash violently and rapidly snarled once she snapped out of her stupefied trance, her hands mimicking the action she was suggesting. “I need to rip off his head and spit down their neck!”

Rarity felt droplets of cold sweat running down her neck and forehead.

“Rainbow Dash, I would really like to say otherwise,” Rarity said with her head bowed. “But many, many other clues lead me to say that it is not just me being overdramatic from my part and/or manipulation by my helper, Lemon Turner.”

Rainbow Dash -- along with Fluttershy and Applejack -- recoiled, nearly clashing the back of her head against the wall, her face showing a fugacious expression of surprise and horror, which was soon replaced by one of pure wrath.

“Y-you…” she shook her head, her teeth gritted, slamming her open palm against her forehead. “This is…. Gah! I can’t believe it! All this time and…y-you come out and stuff and…”

“Whadda ya mean?! Ya have seen Lemon Fucker’s collection of child porn and ya got it off it while ya were at it?!” Applejack shouted as she rolled up her sleeves. “If ya did it…”

“Calm down Applejack,” Sunset said as she grasped as hard as she could Applejack’s forearms and bent her bust over in order to shield Rarity. “There’s no need to resort to violence here, I’m sure our good friend Rarity wouldn’t go as low as committing such a heinous crime for such little gain. She may need to get her tubes tied , but she doesn’t deserve to be beaten up for something she cannot control.”

“Why the hell not?! Are ya tellin’ me Ah should leave her alone why she’s prancin’ ‘round, touchin’ kids as if they were ripe melons?” Applejack shouted, slapping Sunset Shimmer’s hands away. “Ah ain’t goin’ to take that layin’ down!”

“AJ, look, I despise paedos as the next guy and I think they should be massacred ‘n all,” Rainbow Dash said while gesturing. “But I can’t believe one of my friends could be that horrible! It’s not her fault, it’s just that bastard of Lemon Turner that has brainwashed her!”

Rainbow Dash grabbed Rarity’s left arm -- causing a nervous Rarity to be caught off-guard and causing her to gasp -- forcefully lifting it up while jauntily pointing at it with her free arm.

“J-just look at these hands! Look at them!” Rainbow Dash said. “Do they look like a kiddy fiddler’s? Does her face look like a paedo’s? Does she even looks like she could molest a little kid?”

“What does that even mean? Just because she’s all shiny and good-lookin’ outside doesn’t mean she ain’t rotten inside!” Applejack said, pointing her finger towards Rarity. “Ya should’ve seen how many good lookin’ jackals Ah have stopped from gettin’ my sister in their clutches and mah brother can tell ya how many times he didn’t let me go meeting older people!”

“I understand your concern from your point of view of an older sister, but don’t you forget that Rarity is one as well,” Sunset said, making waving gestures going from Applejack towards Rarity. “I’m sure she does understand your concern and she’s likely suffering distress due to this contrast.”

“That is true Sunset.” Rarity said with an uneasy grin and a nod, sinking in her chair and wishing she could melt and fully join her support. “I-I did think about that part of myself…”

“Are y’all outta yer minds?!” Applejack put her hands into her blonde hair, grasping big tufts and lightly pulling them. “We’re talkin’ about… do Ah have really to explain this? It’s as clear as dawn!”

“It is not Applejack.” Twilight said, her voice an unsteady resoluteness and her hands up held up, index pointing at the ceiling. “She has a chemical imbalance, one that causes her to be…”

“‘Chemical imbalance’?” Rainbow Dash said, now looking at Twilight, confusion in her eyes. “This isn’t any of that fancy sciency bookworm stuff, this is just some guy manipulating my friend with fancy ‘rhe-tory’ and stuff!”

"Ain't that wonderful!” Applejack interjected, getting up from her seat and turning her back away from the table while almost slamming her stetson hat onto her head.. "When Ah try to be affectionate with my brother, y'all are crackin’ all sorts of incest jokes. But when one of ya turns out to be a paedo, everybody's jumping up, trying to cover her ass with all sorts of reasons!"

“That’s because we know you aren’t really in an incestous relationship with your brother. Rarity here, however, has a real problem and we must help her in every way we can.” Sunset said. “Also, where are you going?”

“Away!” Applejack said, accelerating her steps. “Ah’ll come back once y’all get back into yer senses and stop tryin’ to get child porn for her!”

When she arrived at the threshold of the shop’s door, she turned around, spat on the ground and stormed off out of the shop for good.

“What’s going on there? Why are you all shouting like that?!” The cashier said irritated.

“We are having some… trouble. Nothing to worry about,” Sunset said, bowing her head. “We’ll try to be more silent.”

Rarity’s head was now buried into her hands, strands of her hair torn away in nervousness forming small piles close to her cup. She was letting the pressure and offence built up while experiencing her friends’ reactions out by letting her tears carry away -- along with part of her make-up -- part of her breast-bound burden and by whispering wordless monotonous tune.

Almost like a benign thunder in a clear day, Rarity felt a pat on her shoulders. She slowly rotated her head and saw Sunset Shimmer warmly smiling at her.

“Uh-hu? What was this all about?” Pinkie Pie suddenly said, nonplussed by the situation and the previous events. “I mean, what was the big deal?”

As soon as those words were spoken, Rarity slowly turned her head around, Sunset Shimmer glared at her, Twilight looked at her sideways, and Rainbow Dash groaned and visibly facepalmed.

“You can’t be serious.” Rainbow Dash said, her tone revealing clear exasperation. “We didn’t talk about anything else for minutes on end, you were right there in the conversation, and yet you can’t remember what we were talking about.”

“No, it’s not that, Dashie.” She said. “It’s that I don’t get why is she having a problem in her head is such a bad thing. Or convinced that she has one. Or convinced that she does not have one even if she has one, or she really has one but not the one she thinks she has.”

“This is only confusing,” Twilight said while quickly adjusting her glasses by the bridge. “Please, just tell us where you want to get with your talking.”

“What I mean is, does it really matter if she’s attracted to children, to guys or to other girls?” Pinkie Pie said with a small shrug, staring down her cup -- which was now full of half-melted ice cream. “When people, most like her, treat kids that way it’s not fun and not nice at all, but otherwise… why treat them the same as those ones? Why being mean to them if they can’t help it? In the end, if they don’t act, does it matter if they happen to like children in ways they shouldn’t?”

Silence ensued, as Sunset set her right hand under her chin and stared at the door, Twilight scratched her chin and looked at the ceiling, Rainbow Dash frowned and squinted her eyes while focusing her gaze on the wall in front of her, Fluttershy closed her eyes and massaged her forehead,and Pinkie remained in her previous pose - arms spread out and bust slightly turned leftwards - as she waited for an answer.

“Actually, yes, it matters somewhat,” Sunset said after a handful minutes of sustained silence. “But not enough to defeat your point, Pinkie. Push away the people with this condition begging for help and understanding will only make them more likely to meet with people with less or no qualms on the matter, for then join their faction fully, not caring for what the others will think or do to them anymore.”

“Makes perfect sense.” Twilight said. “I would know it… even if, admittedly, the circumstances were rather different.”

“Whatever you say Sunset,” Rainbow Dash said while rolling her eyes and groaning, while Fluttershy limited herself to quiet nodding.

Sunset glared at Rainbow Dash, just before turning around towards Rarity again.

“So, don’t worry Rarity, we’ll try our best to help you out,” Sunset said, embracing Rarity’s soft neck in her arms. “You won’t have to worry about a thing.”

“Yeah!” Pinkie chirped, hopping up from her seat and reaching Sunset, giving her a tight hug, one that squeezed Rarity’s fear and tension out of her chest and caused Rarity try to embrace both her and Sunset. Shortly after, Twilight joined as well, who opted to put her minute lavender arms around Pinkie and sunset’s necks and applying as much strength as she could allows herself to, burying her head in-between the two’s shoulder and Rarity’s soft albine mountains.

Rarity, for her part, stood still there, frozen by the warmth brought by the gesture, with only her icy blue eyes thawing out slowly and drop by drop.

“T-thank you all… thank you all so much…”

-Chapter 8-

In her bedroom, Rarity sighed and massaged her forehead, as she prepared herself to complete the second-to-last last piece left to consider in her chain of unveilings. Namely, talk to Sweetie Belle on the woodworm gnawing her sanity away and threatening her soul.

“You can do it Rarity,” she muttered to herself, giving slow circular massages to her forehead. “You have done this with friends, which was much more dangerous, you can do this with your younger sister as well.”

She took a deep breath, followed by another and and then yet another, before she finally got the resolution to get up and walk to the door, out of her room and down the corridor towards the white-and-light pink wooden door that was her destination. She clumped her left hand into a fist and let it thump heavily against the door and repeated the gesture a couple of times, before an answer could be heard from behind the door.

“Come in, it’s as open as it gets!” Sweetie Belle said, her voice as chirpy as a singing red robin or a graceful goldfinch.

Rarity pushed the door inwards, revealing Sweetie Belle -- wearing a sulphur yellow shirt accompanied by an ivory white pleated short skirt -- sitting on a bordeaux beanbag chair, a closed textbook on her straight and down knees and with one of her hands inside it in order to not lose her page, her eyes looking at Rarity.

“What’s up sis?”

Rarity gulped, adjusting her shirt’s neck, before finally gathering the strength to push forward.

“Sweetie Belle, my dear sister,” Rarity said, sitting on Sweetie’s flower-print bed with her back arched a little forward. “While what I am going to say may sound rather… sudden... all things considered, it is important that you know what is happening to your older sister, lest you walk in and see me in a situation you may be unprepared for.”

Sweetie Belle opened up her textbook again, only to make a dog ear as large as a half a page, before closing it again and setting it down onto the warm pink wooly carpet below and getting up on her feet to sit down at her bed’s end -- in fact, laying on it like a cat lounging on a pillow.

“You see, Sweetie Belle,” Rarity started to pet her sister’s hair, her white hand remarking the distinction existing between her two-colored hair. “I have…. Tendencies you may have or may not noticed, depending on how sneaky and curious you have been in the past few months, ones that, despite their sexual nature, need to be sai-”

“Oh! I get it! You’re attracted to young boys!” Sweetie Belle said with a giggle as she jolted up and stood up by the bed. “I knew that already, silly!”

“H-how did you get that?” Rarity said as she recoiled, startled both by Sweetie’s sudden movement and unforeseen knowledge on the matter -- as well as her jarringly cheerful tone of voice. “I thought-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know I shouldn’t have eavesdropped on you, but…” Sweetie Belle blushed a little as she giggled lightly. “I couldn’t help it! I mean, setting aside that time during my ninth birthday you've been eating a boy out with your eyes, it was just too funny to imagine you seeking…”

Rarity squinted her eyes and arched her eyebrows, her gaze as poisonous as a woodland viper -- and just as eager to sink teeth into Sweetie’s fair flesh -- before giving her a strong push that nearly sent the younger girl down onto the floor below.

“Hey! What was that for?!” Sweetie Belle whined as she hastily climbed back up, still clinging onto her bed’s flower-printed sheets.

“You know it perfectly well why!” Rarity said.

“Uhuhu? I thought you were fine with me joking about it…” Sweetie Belle said.

“Why would I be fine with that?!” Rarity said, setting her hands into her hair and ruffling it to the point of full-on disorder of tufts. “Why would I be fine with jokes about me lusting after young children, if thinking about it almost brought me to suicide?! Are you aware how much I have been thinking about that incident?”

Sweetie Belle’s pupils widened and shrunk in rapid succession, as she curled up and cringed, just before jumping forward towards Rarity, hugging her just above her generous breasts.

“I didn’t know that!” Sweetie Belle said, her voice cracking under the oppressing weight of the realization. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t notice it, I…”

“It is all good, Sweetie Belle,” Rarity said, hugging back and then undoing it a few seconds later. “I realize that you did not quite understand the situation and everything else. That being said, still do not joke about my habit like that, is that clear?”

Sweetie Belle looked up at Rarity -- her eyes shining with traces of tears -- and nodded slowly, before crawling away slowly off her bed and went back to sit onto her bean bag. Understanding her reluctance to go on further, Rarity got up and walked away out of her sister’s room, making a small curtsey as she closed the door behind her.

As she walked back to her room, Rarity felt something best forgotten arise once more to torment here.

Namely, the first time to her memory she felt enjoyment at the sight of a young boy's glutei, whether ill-concealed with ornate fabric or bare to the point of seeing the silky smoothness almost shine under the light.

Rarity could only vaguely the context, it being when Sweetie Belle had decided to celebrate at home the anniversary of her coming to the light of the world. However Rarity could not fully forget what had sparked in her the wish to obtain the desired itch given by the sweet submission to lust at the sight of younger boys. She remembered him, his shapely rear end hidden by a very thin layer of white fabric, his trouses made of Genoese fabric pulled down to his ankles during a puerile game, and her mind captured by the desire to see more of him... to sweet-talk him as she followed through her impulse... to manipulate with her fair the untouchable.

Rarity sped up her step towards her room, shaking her head, grunting and whining as she tried to get the memory out of her head, fighting with all her might until she, tired out, let out a deep sigh and slumped onto her couch, letting her mind flow freely with whatever thought came up to her mind.

In Canterlot High’s music room, Sunset Shimmer was sitting by the back on one of the provided chairs -- her trusty electric guitar encased into its black case plastered with a radiating sun-shaped bronze cameo nailed to its top sitting close to her chair, which was extremely close to the stage -- and Rarity was sitting on the stage’s hedge with her right leg resting onto her left one, with her right arm massaging her chin while she used her left one to keep balance in such position.

“You are telling me… it is true that looking for drawn pornographic material for my wish is legitimate from a legal standpoint?” Rarity asked at a low voice, looking down at Rarity with inquisitive eyes.

Sunset Shimmer quickly nodded and hummed.

“Yes, it’s not just one of those borderline-legal stuff Lemon Turner may be doing in order to cope,” Sunset Shimmer said with an equally-low voice, her smile barely barely visible in the dim light of the room and her nod confounding her head with the darkness engulfing her shape. “Back in my world, this was actually suggested for some cases, and, well, I didn’t see any law against it here.” She let out a faint giggle. “In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen one in Fluttershy’s house, in-between her many, many animes and among her mangas.”

“Are you serious?” Rarity said while recoiling somewhat. “You mean…”

“Nah, I don’t think she’s suffering of it, considered that she seemed painfully ignorant of what the apparently-sappy storyline enticed and, well, considered that she hasn’t expressed any real interest in them otherwise.”

“I did not mean to that, Sunset,” Rarity jumped off the stage to walk closer to Sunset. “I just was not aware that she owned such a collection. That, and that she would not recognize the sexual subject matter as such of a production like that, although I take the one she owns is not one of the most lewd available on the market.”

“Ah, sorry about that, it is just that --”

Before Sunset could finish her sentence, there was a loud creaking, as more natural light and a few white rays of artificial light poured inside the room and revealed all -- from the dark green plastic and black metal chairs, to the cherry wood stage -- to any onlooker -- such as Pinkie Pie opening the door.

“Hai there!” Pinkie Pie turned the light on with a quick finger flicking onto the switch just next to the swinging door. Sunset and Rarity immediately got up and hastily waved their hands towards Pinkie Pie, who proceeded to exchange the favour.

“How’re you two doing?” Pinkie asked while bouncing forward towards her two friends. “Hope you’re all good, because this is the last practice we’re gonna do before that big party with those ole’ grumpypants of Crystal Prep.”

Rarity and Sunset odded at the unison, then the latter went forward to the stage to unlock the guitar case and the former walked towards the musical instruments’ wardrobe in the backstage.

“So, were all invitations sent?” Rarity asked as she pulled her bass out of the wardrobe.

“Of course yes, why not?” Pinkie Pie asked, pulling a pair of drumsticks from behind her back. “I’ve sent the invitations twice just in case they missed it. In fact, I’ve been gone from school day ‘cuz I was delivering invitations myself!”

“Oh?” Rarity asked, her heart skipping a beat at the implications. “Literally everyone you knew? Friends of friends too?”

“Yeah!” Pinkie Pie said cheerfully, hopping up the stage and getting behind the drumset as she spoke. “Worried that Lemony wasn’t going to turn up at the party because I forgot to tell him?”

-Chapter 10-

Two days had passed since Lemon Turner had organized an expedition at the villa where Pinkie Pie was hosting her "Crystal Preparatory Academy- Canterlot High School" reparatory party.

Rarity, wearing only her black bra underneath a white silk shirt and her light blue panties, was sitting on her bed’s border, her trusty English book lodged in the wedge between her legs, her hands -- which were still damp from the washing-up that followed a serene self-stimulation session, one involving the targets that were reason for her strife and whose completition's effect had yet to fully wear off -- resting at her thighs’ sides and her head inclined downwards to look at the pages crammed full of dates and notions, trying to learn both by whispering them to herself as she read.

Suddenly there was knock on the door, and Rarity sprung up and -- after picking up the book she had accidentally thrown onto the floor atop her bed -- grabbed the black skirt she had left discarded onto the chair to rapidly button it around her waist.

“What is it?” Rarity asked as she finished snapping the buttons on.

“The courier’s here,” Sweetie Belle said from behind the door. “He has a package for you to get and sign for.”

“Alright, I am incoming.” Rarity said, as she also opened the socks’ drawer and pulled out a pair of striped black and white long socks to rapidly set them over her feet and legs and letting them lightly snap over her shapely thighs, before jumping forward to swoop up a pair of worn-out black loafers to quickly set her feet inside.

Once she was done hastily dressing up Rarity opened the door and walked down the stairs towards her house’s front door, which was already open. At Rarity’s doorstep, a short jade man in a red and yellow outfit stood by, holding a clipboard in his right hand and keeping a rather large box in balance on his opposite shoulder.

“Miss Rarity Belle, is that you?” he asked, his voice lethargic. When Rarity nodded, he set the clipboard inside his uniform’s blouse and grabbed a blue pen from his trousers’ right pocket, before giving it to Rarity. Then sign this here on the clipboard.”

Rarity took the pen in her left hand and, as soon the courier had grabbed the clipboard again, she rapidly scribbled her name onto the designated spot and, when it was done, he put the box down and turned around and ran away towards the van visible past the lawn.

Rarity glared at him, before kneeling onto the box to read the sender’s address.

“Let us see…” she squinted her eyes as she read the white label out loud. “Turner Lemon; Majorfield, 10 Ceramic Hill.”

Rarity looked sideways at the label on the box. She set her hands underneath the box and she lifted it with a grunt, slowly turning her back around to get to the kitchen.

“Lemon Turner has sent me a package?” Rarity muttered to herself as she slowly made a turn to the left into the dining room-kitchen, delicately leaving the package onto the solid cedar table clad with a canary yellow tablecloth and with iron legs styled after corinthian columns. “Well, only one manner to discover his intentions…”

She walked inside the kitchen proper and she opened one of the smooth metal drawers close to the stoves and the two electric hotplates, revealing the sharp utensils neatly placed from left to right by their size. Lookin in the middle of the row, Rarity saw a pair of simple metal chickentruncer scissors.

“These should work well enough for my purposes.” She muttered to herself as she grabbed them and brought them to the table whence she had left the postal package. She snapped the scissors open and used one of the blades to pierce and then slash through the cardboard and the sticky tape keeping the content hidden from her and anyone else’s sight.

As soon as the scissor completed its cutting path the cardboard wings sprung up, unleashing a faint lemon and rosemary scent and revealing a yellowed postal envelope closed with red stamped wax sitting atop three square-shaped somewhat ornate metal tin boxes and a few yellow and light green soap bars wrapped in transparent plastic. Rarity took the envelope in her hands and used her right index’s polished nail to crack the wax and then lift the entire paper lid away, then folding it behind the envelope and setting it down onto the table next to the box it came from

Using her left index and thumb, Rarity carefully extracted the missive out of its envelope. Realizing it had been folded onto itself couple of times, Rarity let the letter unfold in-between her fingers, before firmly setting it in her palms and in front of her eyes. Scanning from top to bottom, Rarity managed to find the letter’s starting line below a red stamp, one depicting three wavy lines -- clearly supposed to be sea waves -- and three stylized lemons above. Squinting her eyes, she finally managed to actually read the message.

“Greetings to you, Rarity. May the blessings of the Sky rain aplenty on you.

This is my first letter written to you and it shall be the last for a relatively long time, not because I wish to sever any kind of contact with you, that could not be farther from reality. I am not going to write to you for a long time because, after realizing the full weight of my action that night, the night I had assembled a mercenary band, one that paid itself with the struggle I had engaged it for, in order to hunt down and punish the ones I felt that had done wrong to me, not caring at all about your wishes and time’s inevitable passing and the changes it bore, bears and will always bear, I decided to denounce myself to the police and claim full responsibility for the incident. Sure, I may have not engaged in physical confrontation with anyone and my action resulted in a broken arm at the very worst, but, ultimately, I was the one that had gathered the forces, disturbed the public peace and ordered it to be done. Even when I tried to save Twilight Sparkle from suffering major injuries brought by a fight she could not possibly win alone, even when I successfully attempted to call off the charge and retreat before the municipal police could arrive and win over us with overwhelming force, I did nothing but simply do the actions that had started the melee, but in reverse.

I will go through due process soon enough. My father hopes for me to slip out of this with the power of an able man of law, Sunny Flare smugly believes herself to be immune, but I do not expect to escape prison and fines, because each and every victim of the assault is bound to press charges against me and the most violent assailants at the party and because I will not fight for a verdict declaring me innocent and exempt from any kind of punishment. Even if I somehow escape court justice, I am sure that those cleansing powers of yours -- considered that they could subjugate the otherworldly beast born out of Twilight’s rage and her desire of subverting the position she was forced onto her -- will be sufficient to clean me of any moral filth I may have gathered along the way.

I believe myself to be a man of certain worth. As such, in addition to any reparations and any fines I will be forced to pay, I decided to send a package containing a few presents that you, my ex-companion Twilight and the unfortunate host Pinkie Pie will surely appreciate.

Yours truly,

-Lemon Turner of Citri-Vasca.”

Rarity slowly shook her head, as she folded the letter back into its original state, slowly pacing it at the box’s left side.

“Lemon, Lemon… you may have discouraged me from killing myself, but it hard to ignore what you have done at the party.” Rarity said to herself as she extracted the packs of soap and the metal containers inside the cardboard box, revealing another green envelope -- labeled as “War reparations” in a gothic calligraphy -- on the package’s bottom. “But I guess I cannot decline gifts, even if sent in clear bad faith.”

She picked the green envelope and set it aside, before taking a look at the two plastic wrappings containing ten soap bars and the trio of square tins. Rarity noticed a small oval pink label on the plastic film protecting the bars of soap, said label read, in an ornate dark purple typeface, “True Amalfitan-Provençal soap” and, as soon as Rarity delicately ripped part of the wrapping off, the smell of rosemary bonded with the scent of lemon and went forward to celebrate this union inside Rarity’s fine nostrils. She hummed loudly, savouring the smell for several seconds, before slowly going back to look at the rst of Lemon Turner’s sendings, namely the small metal containers.

Two out of three had a lid closed by a mere sticker and decorated with stylized violet flowers on a darker background, with a white, lavender and gold label composed by an oval overlapping with a rectangle with concave angles standing out in the background reading “Pastiglie Leone,” the box making a faint rattling noise as it was shaken.

“Ah, violet-flavoured piedmontese candies for Twilight?” Rarity muttered as she manipulated the box around, until she read, on one of its sides, the exact same flavour she had predicted. “Called it.”

Setting aside the two boxes of candies, she went forward to analyze the next box, a much sober and larger one, made of shiny metal and with a latching closure resembling an old oil bottle’s.

Rarity tried to carefully snap the latch open, but the lid still sprung up and caused the box to fall backwards, pouring its content onto the table, namely a smaller black rectangular box with four leaf-shaped shiny clasps keeping it closed, a booklet with a white-veined garnet cover, and a black flash driver. Arching an eyebrow, Rarity snapped the box open, revealing a disassembled traverse flute, each piece set inside a slot in the grass green faux vellum, each metal component as shiny and chrome as a mirror, a piece of paper rolled-up like a papyrus close to the mouthpiece’s slot.

“Is this supposed his gift to Twilight? But why?” Rarity muttered as she took up the note and painstakingly unrolled it in-between her indexes. As soon as the entire message, written in greenish-black ink, was revealed, Rarity whispered is words to herself.

“Rejoice, Twilight, for you will finally have the material you need to dedicate part of your time to the activity you longed for but never managed to enjoy in its fullest: music. Along with the instrument, I have given you a small book containing a small selection of musical pieces, along with a flash drive containing a small course needed in order to start playing this musical instrument.”

“Twilight used to want to play the traverse flute?” Rarity squinted her eyes and scanned the message another two or three times. “Or is this just Lemon Turner projecting his own likings onto her?”

Realizing that the message was indeed about Lemon turner declaring Twilight had always wished to play the traverse flute, Rarity lightly scratched her head in confusion for a few seconds, before shrugging and getting up to walk back to her room.

“Well, I guess there is no point in waiting tomorrow to deliver these,” Rarity said as she walked down the hallway to the stairs. “But let us make a cellphone call to check where my friends are and check if they are going to group together or if they already are gathered and waiting for me.”

Back into her room, Rarity went forward to grab her phone, which she had left onto her desk, and, swiping it out of its sleep, Rarity rapidly went through the contacts until she found Pinkie Pie's number, then, after tapping it two times, called it.

"Hallo!?" Pinkie Pie answered not even a second after the phone had started to bleep while dialing.

"Hello Pinkie, quick question, do you mind telling me where you and the others are currently?" Rarity calmly asked.

"Oh, I'm just here at the bakery, sittin' around 'cuz I have one arm hurt and, well, I can't do many stuffs with just one arm free and well, the docs told me to not trie myself too much anyway so yeah, not doin' much of interest, I'm just sitting and talking with Dashie, Flutters and Twi. AJ isn't here thought, she's toobusy with some things to come."

"Alright, alright, I understood," Rarity said making a pushing gesture to the air as she answered. "I will be there soon."

-Chapter 11-

Around ten minutes of walking through the crowded streets later, Rarity arrived in front of her destination, Sugarcube Corner, a mock Tudor-style two-story building with pink walls, round windows in the upper floor and two large shop windows revealing an extensive selection of pastry, one ranging from glass urns brim full of raisin cookies to cream cannoli, passing through elaborate chocolate sculptures and pyramids of gianduiotti wrapped in golden foil and sustained by several still-foiled dark chocolate bars.

After quickly checking that no one was standing just next to the door, Rarity pushed the door inwards and her senses were soon assaulted by their respective impressions: she saw a rather large crowd walking all around, as she stepped inside she heard a subtle bell ringing underneath hustle and bustle accompanied by the sound of ceramic and metal clashing together at various intensity, she smelt the smell of raw flour and cocoa coming from the kitchens and the smell of light sweat from the people nearby, she felt her back pushed forward by an uncaring elbow. With a small grunt Rarity wedged herself in the crowd, before sliding her pursue off her shoulder and setting it over her head and then trying to elevate herself above the crowd by standing on her feet’s tips and thus walking on them.

In-between the variegated humanity occupying the various tables while eating and loudly chattering, Rarity spotted her friends sitting in a far corner, close to the counter’s metal swinging door in front of the thick semi-transparent tent-door leading to the kitchen.

As she approached her destination while navigated through the sea of people passing by, Rarity could see Pinkie Pie’s left arm was firmly wrapped on her chest thanks to a dark blue sling and a few white bandages, her healthy hand grasping a milkshake glass' stout stem, while Rainbow Dash’s right hand was wrapped in a cocoon of patches and gauzes and holding onto a sugar-encrusted Bundt cake, chewing and talking at the same time.

As soon as she was out of the thickest part of the crowd and, thus, much more visible, Rarity soon saw Pinkie Pie spring up and use her healthy arm to both wave at her and invite Rarity to join the group, as Twilight timidly waved and Rainbow kept on chewing -- or perhaps had tried to greet with her mouth full and without turning around at all.

Rarity lowered her pursue, sliding it onto her left shoulder while she sped up her march to the table.

“Hello there, my dear gals!” Rarity said as she swiftly pushed a chair close to the table. “I came here bringing gifts from a most unlikely source.”

“Gifts? Really?!” Pinkie Pie said, bouncing on her seat a little. “Oh what are they, what are they?! Who sent them?!”

“Lemon Turner sent all the objects I am going to give to you now.” Rarity set the purse onto the table and quickly opened up the brass zipper and spread the two velvet halves apart, revealing in full view the candies’ tins, the flute’s container and the emerald envelope containing Lemon Turner’s compensations for Pinkie Pie’s ruined party. Rarity immediately handed the envelope to Pinkie Pie, saying. “This is for you, Pinkie Pie. It is the payment of the ‘war reparations,’ presumably he sent money to pay for the party he spoiled and for the arm he indirectly shattered.”

“Aaaww.” Pinkie Pie’s hair deflated a little bit as she took the envelope with her useful hand and looked at it with her shoulders drooped. Meanwhile, Rarity pulled out the candies’ tins and the flute’s box, before pushing them towards a baffled Twilight.

“These are his gifts to you, Twilight,” she said. “A stash of Piedmontese candies that will probably last you for a few months and a transverse flute, which he claimed to be the musical instrument you have always wished to play.”

Twilight Sparkle cautiously pulled both the tins and the flute’s container towards her, before taking one of the candies’ small boxes in her right hand, silently inspecting its exterior by slowly rotating her wrist around and bobbing her head back and forth.

“Is something the matter Twi?”Rainbow Dash asked, slumping herself onto the table as she leaned her head forward towards Twilight. “Is that guy insulting you or something?”

“N-no… it’s just that this… is a bit odd.” Twilight said, lifting her glasses up and looking closer at the labels. “I mean, he used to give these to the girls that had done him a favour or stuff like that, but I don’t recall anything I’ve done to him he could be grateful for. And then there’s the flute. Yes, I kinda wanted to learn to play it, but… with all the stuff that has happened, I’ve never got around to talk about it much, let alone try out.”

Rarity arched an eyebrow just as Rainbow Dash did.

“Wait, wait, wait… then why didn’t you join our band? We could’ve taught you how to!” Rainbow Dash said while quickly raising her head and staring at Twilight, who was slightly blushing and averting her gaze.

“I just thought that you had no use for a flute, being a mostly rock band and all.”

Rainbow Dash threw her arms outwards and up in the air, chuckling somewhat.

“Oh c’mon, really? We’ve accepted Fluttershy in our band and she used to play on the tambourine! The tambourine! But then I-- I mean we, managed to teach her how to use the drum machine. And sing without losing control of herself. ” Rainbow Dash said. “‘Sides, we can always use a flute player: Rarity has been tryin’ to find one since forever so that she could play her dusty old music with us, maybe she could finally do that. She deserves it, after all the trouble she went through due to Lemon Turner and his attempts to convince her to do horrible things.”

Rarity recoiled as she forced a grin on her face, her ivory skin suddenly creating pearls of sweat that melted and striped her face a little, the fear of the past period resurfacing with brutal and ruthless vigour as she subconsciously brought her shirt’s left sleeve close to her mouth. Twilight turned around with her left index lifted up like a banner’s stand in the midst of an heated battle.

“She was never under his control, Rainbow Dash.” Twilight said. “She has been like this for… what, several years.”

Recovering most of her courage and inspired by Twilight’s first strike forward, Rarity put her arm down and, by springing up from her heat, counter-attacked her hesitations and its ally terror.

“I have been wishing to have sexual contact with little boys since I was, I think, eleven. However, I recognized those longings as a mental illness only a month or so ago, namely, around the time you first talked about Lemon Turner with me.” Rarity said, resting her hands onto the table’s surface and holding her knees onto the table’s edges. “But worry not, my friend, you have done nothing but bring me closer to understand myself and to cope with a matter it was best revealed to me and then made mostly harmless. All I need right now, besides psychological help from a trained professional, is for you to accept me the best way you can, not break off either in terror of complicity’s punishment or disgust at what the least-civilized part of my mind tends to conjure up.”

Rainbow Dash -- slack-jawed and silenced by the sudden response -- silently stared at Rarity. Rarity gulped, as she forced herself to look right into Rainbow Dash’s eyes and not fidget too much.

“Uuuhh… you two feeling alright?” Pinkie asked, waving her hand in front of Rarity’s eyes, causing the latter to blink and shake her head.

“Oh, yes, I am.” Rarity said. “I would not be so sure about Rainbow Dash, thought, considered the… rather statue-like gaze she has currently.”

And, just as if her words were a magical spell to bring her back to life, Rainbow Dash shook her head. Then she threw her arms high up in the air, squeaking and hissing nonsensical monosyllables as she looked up at the ceiling and set her hands into her rainbow hair and violently ruffled it as if it was an egg prepared to be turned into omelette on a searing hot plate.

Then, she got up and look around her, her mouth still producing only the basest of sounds, as she now looked down at the gray stone floor covered in discarded receipts and crumbs, setting off towards the crowd and, presumably, the exit.

“Hey! You still have to pay for the bagel!” Pinkie Pie shouted towards Rainbow Dash, before realizing her friend was crossing a far too deep spot of the river of people to hear her. “Ah, nevermindies. She’ll give the money tomorrow.”

Rarity, confused by what had just happened, looked at Twilight. Twilight looked back with a slight frown, leaving behind an awkward silence. Then, after what felt like an eternity, Rarity nodded and so did Twilight, confirming both’s question on the event.
“Anyways, what do we have here?” Pinkie Pie asked as she opened the flute’s dark box, revealing all of its contents, flash drive and booklet included.

“Oooh, it’s a music book!” Pinkie Pie said while quickly browsing it. “I wonder if there’s the Falalan in there or El Condor Pasa or Samarkand or…”

“I am sure it does.” Rarity said, stretching her right hand forward towards Pinkie. “Just… put it down please.”

Pinkie Pie did so with a sigh. Meanwhile, Twilight timidly pushed the chair closer to the table, thusly allowing her left arm to rest on Rarity’s shoulders, which Rarity reciprocated.

Later that day, Rarity -- dressed in a light red silk dress with a narrow pleated long skirt and a waist-long shirt with two roses, one black and one white, embroidered on each side, white at the sleeves’ hem, diamond-shaped light blue cufflinks and half-white half-black neck buttons of the same shape as the cufflinks’, golden rings with a thread of tiny pearls and an equally-small brilliant as earrings, and a deep red small purse with dark brown leather strap and brass rings -- was walking up the theater's red marble stairs that lead up to the main entrance, which was hidden by a dark blue gold-trimmed curtain and guarded by two tall ushers clad in gray and white suits.

Rarity briefly stopped. extracting the bronze-coloured ticket from her already open pursue and, with an agile hand play, held it between her index and her middle finger as she went towards the ushers. One of them took the ticket, stamped it and moved the curtain aside, revealing a seemingly-endless sweep of red padded seats lined up before the stage -- which was already occupied with the orchestra’s battlements.

“Seat ninety-nine on the left, third-to-last line.” the usher said with a small bow. “Enjoy the show, madam.”

Rarity did a small curtsey, before walking inside the theater itself and extricated herself through the maze of seats, both empty and full alike, until she arrived to her destination, which was just next to a speaker hidden inside a niche and surmounted by a naked caryatid holding on a lamp shaped after a lily flower.

Rarity set her bag underneath the seat, before holding onto her skirt as she sat down with a small sigh. She then looked up, awaiting for the presenter and the musicians to walk forth onto the stage and, thus, start the concert. While she waited, she looked all around her: she saw five men carrying an harpsichord and placing it in the middle of the two semicircular galleries; she saw a sharply-dressed couple vividly chatting while they looked for their seats, before exchanging a fugitive kiss on their cheeks, bringing a smile to them both and to Rarity as well; she saw a small mixed group of people of her age bickering over the seats’ disposition; and she saw persons just walking inside and taking their own seats by their own and, among them, much to her surprise, Rarity saw Lemon Turner approach her row.

He was clad in a bourdeaux and Pompeian yellow vertically-striped outfit, composed by trousers tucked inside his black boots and a shirt neatly folded and with a black handkerchief folded inside the breast pocket.

Rarity wiggled around, setting her knees onto the seat’s cushion and turning her back to the stage to instead watch Lemon Turner approaching.

“What are you doing here Lemon Turner?” Rarity asked to him, as he walked past her row’s empty seats towards, apparently, a seat beside her. “Why are you --”

“Oh, greetings Rarity,” he said, stopping to bow before her. “I failed to see you. If you are wondering, currently I am not accused of, or, rather, I did not confess of executing, a crime deemed grave enough to require preventive arrest for the duration of the judicial process. I have to show myself at the police station every day at the same exact hour and, for the time being, I am banished from the villa that I sieged and ordered to assault viciously.”

Rarity furrowed her eyebrow at his explanation, and she squinted her eyes to look at his half-shaven face to catch any subconscious hint.

“That is… odd. But I guess that confessing a crime may have its benefits.” Rarity said. Lemon Turner turned up his nose, before walking to the seat at Rarity’s left side.

“I must say, I am surprised that you are present here in this location, assisting to this upcoming concert.” He said as he slowly descended onto the seating, his right arm firmly grabbing onto the somewhat scraped wooden armrest and his left left one doing a whirling gesture towards the air. “Is there any reason for this?”

Offended, Rarity slightly recoiled, her right hand closed in a fist onto her chest and a frown onto her face. However, she quickly regained composure and wiped her grimace off her face to properly answer.

“There is no real reason, besides my appreciation for the music that is going to be played here,” arity said calmly, before letting a small grin escape her as she thought up the question she was going to ask. “Why, are you here for any particular reason?”

“Actually, yes. I had attained two tickets for this concert, one for me and one for my love interest, but, sadly, after my action at the villa, I deemed inappropriate to go out with her to listen to a concert.” He said, a small blush growing on his cheeks as he spoke. “She should be educated that actions have consequences for all, you know, and at such a young ag --”

He immediately froze up, his face now completely red and his ears seemingly producing small clouds of steam. Then, he bent over, covering his mouth as he swore, in turn causing Rarity to chuckle at his unintentional declaration of engagement. Her chuckles ended soon, however, as her mind unearthened memories of her own fight with her condition and the words that Lemon Turner spoke to ease up her burden as manner of reprimand, Rarity’s hilarity suddenly disappeared and was replaced by vague concern and guilt.

“It is fine, Lemon,” Rarity said. “Besides, I am in no position to either judge or spread around the news of your infatuation with a girl that is much younger than you”

He let out a bellow-like sigh as he rose up again and his face went back to its usual colour.

“Thank you very much, Rarity. I shall remember this.” He said.

And, just as soon as the vague echo of his words faded, the lights slowly dimmed until they went off completely, thusly calling his and Rarity’s attention to the stage.

In the center, highlighted by a blue light standing against the darkness, a white man dressed in orange and purple with a shirt with inflated shoulders and trousers with bloated thighs, was holding onto a microphone, while the musicians themselves were in the dim light left by the spotlight.

“Good evening, sirs and madams, and welcome to our third encounter of our concert plan, ‘World’s Music Throughout History: A Rapid Discourse,’ brought by the efforts of the Atrium Musicae Upsaliensis and the here present Arouser.”

“Good, I was afraid they were going to propose the Hymn to Nikkal and the Epitaph of Seikilos.” Lemon Turner muttered, causing a confused Rarity to turn her head around towards him, which prompted him to answer. “If you are confused, I already went to the first two encounters with my school for our studies on the art of music and harmony throughout the ages of History, but, all too sadly, it turned out to be much less interesting than I was expecting it to be, no thanks to the constant intermission by our Music teacher Mister Antorpheus and his obsession for the cithara coupled with this presenter’s clear lack of sleep the previous night.”

Rarity nodded, before hearing an harpsichord being played at a rather vivid pace.

“And, now, we shall begin this concert with one of the musical symbols of this era, ‘Mr. George Whitehead His Almand,” the presenter said, bowing and walking out the scene, as the harpsichord faded and was followed by a string of violin, in turn followed by another harpsichord crescendo. Rarity, mentally raptured by the music, stopped listening to Lemon Turner’s rant and let the notes’ flow bring her somewhere high and away from the seat she was sitting in...

-Chapter 12-

Twilight Sparkle -- wearing a lavender shirt and a black miniskirt -- slowly walked inside Canterlot High’s music room, a large leather bag hanging by her left shoulder.

“So, here I am, Sunset,” Twilight said as she walked towards Sunset Shimmer, who was sitting atop a speaker and idly whistling an unqualifiable tune. “I think I’m finally good enough to join the band as more than just the accountant.”

“Well, then, show us what’ve you got,” Sunset said as she slowly got up from her chair -- which was close to Rarity’s -- and climbed up the stage to then pick up and carry a foldable black music stand on her shoulder. “Here’s the stand if you need it.”

“It won’t be needed.” she made a sweeping gesture in the air, before scaling onto the stage and setting the bag down onto the floor, opening it to reveal a box made of varnished wood, which in turn was opened, revealing the fully-assembled flute wrapped in a red rag inside.

Rarity shifted onto her seat and bent forward, crossing her arms over her knees, eager to know what Twilight was going to play on her gifted flute.

“Alright, lemme just take a breath…” Twilight said, inhaling and exhaling loudly, before setting her tender lips onto the mouthpiece. Then, she started bowling softly, setting her fingers onto each hole, finally producing coherent notes and a structured musical piece.

It did not take long for Rarity to recognize the piece as a flute-only version of La Spagna Danza Alta, which only made her pupils get as wide as dinner plates and caused her jaw to drop as she attempted to follow each and every movement of the hand but failing spectacularly at doing so. So, as soon as Twilight had moved the flute away from her mouth, Rarity almost instinctively clapped her hands.

“Impressive... “ Sunset Shimmer said, holding onto her chin for a few seconds before briefly clapping. “Who knew you could learn to play that by heart so quickly?

Twilight blushed slightly as she inflated her chest and bowed with her right hand set on her heart, while her left one kept the grip onto the flute.

“Oh, it didn’t take me too long,” she said, as she bent down on her right knee, wrapped the flute back into the rag and placed the bundle inside the box. “It was just a matter of lots of practice… sometimes lasting from evening until dawn.”

“Still, that is rather impressive,” Rarity said with a small smile. “Even with extended practice time, learning such a complex piece in a few weeks while starting with little to no experience is a remarkable feat indeed.”

“I agree with Rarity.” Sunset pointed at Rarity and winked in compliance. “So, yeah, consider yourself part of our band. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to make you the center of attention when playing at most events, but we’ll try to get you in whenever it’s possible, alright?”

Before anything else could escape from any of the three girls’ lips, the door loudly creaked, prompting the three girls to look behind them and at whoever was currently entering the room. It was Rainbow Dash, clothed in her usual white emblazoned shirt and tar black bike shorts underneath a magenta-white striped short skirt. Her face was lightly wrinkled like a fresh batch of sheepskin, in a frown of what Rarity could only assume was tension about a matter unknown to her.

“Ah, hello there Rainbow Dash,” Rarity said in spite of her friend’s apparent mood, as she showed her side to Sunset Shimmer to look to her incoming friend. “Are you feeling ready to welcome a new member to our band?”

Rainbow Dash suddenly stopped and recoiled, then she went forward to rapidly gesture and blabber gibberish for a couple of seconds, before straightening her spine up and adjusting a few strands of her hair back into a position that was less obtrusive to her sight.

“Uhuh, I didn’t know we were adding Twi to the band just yet, but, anyways, it’s not time for that just yet,” Rainbow Dash said quickly as she walked towards Rarity, Sunset and Twilight. “To make a long story short, I’ve got over my shock about Rarity’s problem, and spent a few days trying to get AJ to go out and give her a chance to explain herself, instead of just shutting down everything.”

Rarity had to go back to her previous sitting position in order to not fall nape-first onto the floor, while Sunset gave a nervous glance to Rainbow Dash and Twilight walked on her toes towards Rarity.

“Is she going to come right here?” Rarity asked. “Or did she say she was going to meet me somewhere else at a different time?”

“She said she was gonna come here right now,” Rainbow Dash walked back at the door and turned her back to Rarity and the others. “Oh, she’s right here.”

Rarity lightly bit on her lips and clenched her right fist on a chair’s black plastic back, as she used her free hand to grip on Twilight’s shoulder -- who let out a small whimper of pain as Rarity did so. When the lip bite felt insufficient, Rarity started taking deep breaths and tried to focus on other subjects, as to not cave in to the tension that was inherent to the moment.

Twilight leaned next to Rarity’s ear, whispering words to her, presumably also encouragements. However, all Rarity managed to understand from Twilight’s murmur was her desire for the pressure onto her shoulder to cease at once, to which Rarity complied.

Around a minute later, accompanied by the loud and heavy clacking of her boot on the ground, Applejack appeared in Rarity’s field of sight. Her boots had clear steel toes, her usual denim skirt had been swapped with a pair of prussian blue knee-length shorts, and her white and green shirt was nowhere to be seen: in its stead, a very dark gray short-sleeved shirt abundantly covered her torso.

“Ah’m here now Dash.” she said. “Ah hope fer yer and Rarity’s sake ya know what you’re doing.”

“Oh hello there Applejack,” Rarity got up, gathering all the strength to be the one to speak up first. “It has been a while since we last have seen each other, albeit in not very agreeable circumstances, so, would you mind telling me how your enterprises of all kind are doing of late?”

Applejack scoffed, as she walked forward towards Rarity’s position, her shoulder drooping down as if she had been carrying an extremely weighty burden on her large shoulders for a long time and over long distances and a matching scowl.

“Ah ain’t got time for that, Ah wanna get over this as fast as Ah can,” she said dryly, as she went on towards a seat and used her left hand to lean on as she crossed her knees and set the other hand against her side. “So, Dash told me ya got a ‘good’ reason fer yer liking of lil’ uns and she’s been pestering me on it ‘til mah apples fell off the tree, so Ah decided to give ya one more chance.”

Sunset shimmer rolled her eyes groaning and Rainbow Dash-- who was still standing at the door -- glared at Applejack, before moving towards Applejack and a finger-fidgeting Rarity and standing in-between them like a living and breathing cloistered coventry's grill.

“Just in case…” She whispered to Rarity, who answered with a gulp and a neck fixing.

“Well, actually, I also have plenty of reasons to defend Rarity,” Twilight waveringly said, before bowing and doing a few steps back. “But I’ll let you sort this out between yourselves.”

“Good.” Applejack stated, leaving behind sepulchral silence. Rarity fidgeted with her fingers, resisting with all her might to not fall back on her shirt’s sleeves as a manner of cutting anxiety’s thick fog into smaller and easily-dispersed strands.

“So? Cat got your tongue?” Applejack said as she slowly rose her head, showing her furrowed eyebrows and a deep frown. “Speak up!”

Rarity took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, as she collected her courage one more time to speak.

“Applejack, this is not a matter I like to speak of lightly, for this is no talk about luxurious clothing or somewhat outdated musical tastes, but a matter of mental health.” Rarity said slowly, emphasizing her words by using her right index like an orchestral leader’s cane. “I know it may sound rather hard to digest, given that you are brought to think that my brethrens and sisters have chosen to long for… shall we say, younger partners, and in some cases only feeling lust’s burning fire and romance’s mellow warmth only when gazing upon children.”

“Darnit Rarity, stop speakin’ fancy to confuse me!”

Rarity winced at the interruption, while her other friends gave another glare at Applejack.

“If you really need it, I can try to translate what she’s saying.” Sunset Shimmer said. “Or, better yet, just feeding you the important details.”

“No, it is fine, I will try to speak more plainly,” Rarity said to Sunset, before turning around towards her former friend. “What I was saying is, some people, people with my illness, tend to be attracted by children, and, sometimes, the attraction, both in terms of sex and in term of romance, is limited to kids only.”

“And so?” Applejack said, a grin growing on her face. “How does that connect with fiddling kids?”

“Not everyone that has this problem rationally wants to have sex with children, or even date them. In fact, some even fight it, to the bitter end in some cases.” Rarity said, before pointing her open left palm towards her. “I am among them.”

“Yeah, sure. Ya can choose to turn it off and on whenever ya want to.” She said. “Rarity, did ya mistake me for an idiot?”

“I did not. And my desires never truly shut off, I simply try to resist to going forward to kidnap and do awful things to them and attempt to use private times as manner to relieve the pressure, so to speak.” Rarity said, causing Applejack to roll her eyes.

“And ya keeping telling me that… if ya can wish so hard ya can stop yourself from touching children, how come ya can’t simply shut off and live like all of us?” Applejack asked. “Why dont’cha get help fer your problem with law ‘n’ all? Why do ya choose to want children that way? Why do ya choose to be… inhuman?”

Rarity felt a powerful, immense urge build up in her chest. At the beginning of the argument, it had started with a vague spark of courage and pride, but, as it dragged on, it had grown in size. And, now, it had reached its critical mass and it was going to blow up at any minute. Rarity let out a few locomotive-like hisses, she clenched her fists until her fingers’ phalanxes felt they were going to implode, and her toes were as restless as a school of seagulls furiously looking for their offspring. Her blood started to boil like molten iron, and her face reddened to the point she looked like she was wearing a grisly tribal face paint.

Finally, the chasm of her mouth opened, letting out a warcry-like roar.

“I did not choose any of this!” She shouted, as she jumped forward hands-first, stopped a few millimeters from Applejack’s taurine neck only by Rainbow Dash’s strong arms. “I did not choose to be attracted to children and ‘normal’ boys alike just as much you did not choose to lust on men your age! I did not ‘choose to do evil’ because I am mentally ill! I am not ‘born evil,’ nor I will ever, ever resign to let myself be considered as such!”

Applejack nearly crashed against the seat’s back, curling up slightly at the almost incredible sight of Rarity’s wrothful response.

“If I could do that I would rip this mental illness away from my soul and stomp on it! I would go through what we have put through old Sunset Shimmer, the Sirens and Midnight Sparkle in order to free myself from this!” Rarity shouted, stretching her arms forward towards applejack, as Rainbow Dash used all her strength to keep her away from her target. “But, you know what?! I cannot do that! I shall be forever always wishing for a young boy’s naked look until the day I will be put to rest underground, but you, you and your values deem me and my kin a mass of lesser human beings due to a fault in our minds! Why do you think some people like me prefer to molest and then be jailed and raped to death in prison? Why do you think people build up paper-mache masks they plan to wear all their lives? On a lesser note, why do you think Lemon Turner deemed appropriate to storm a villa in order to crash a party and overpower two people he felt they had damaged him? He was blinded by rage, yes, but against whom and why?”

Applejack scurried herself up and sat onto the seat, instead of just curling up on it, while Sunset ran behind Rarity to aid Rainbow Dash as she kept on trying to be an obstacle to the white girl’s fury.

“A-Ah dunno…” Applejack said, vigorously shaking her head. “Roseluck and Sunset Ah guess?”

“But why was he furious at them?” Rarity said, feeling the sensation die down a little at the sight of a retreating Applejack. “Lemon Turner experienced the full might of exclusion for something he could not and cannot help, and he resorted to retreat and contemptu mundi to properly deal with it. Yes, he did wrong and that is undeniable still, but he had his motivation to do so. And, while I do not plan to fall back on such a plan in case of your refusal to accept me, I just want to let you know how utterly important it is for me to be morally supported. Was I clear enough?”

Applejack nodded, as Rarity -- with a deep, deep sigh that expelled days upon days of anguish in one warm breeze -- limply rested on Rainbow Dash’s arms for a couple of seconds, before getting back up on her legs again, casually dusting and fixing up her wrinkled shirt.

“Sorry for my previous outburst.” Rarity said, as she started to adjusted her hair, which had been turned into a snarl of strands of hair by her own fiery rage. “But, as they say, once a year it is legit to go mad.”

“And to remind me how does working out really hard feels?” Rainbow Dash whined, as she used her left arm to massage her biceps, then switched arms to do the same action. “I haven’t been feeling like this since… I dunno!”

“That is a side effect I am sorry I provoked.” Rarity said. “It was not my wish to inflict that pain upon you.”

“Wow… Never expected you to see react like that.” Sunset muttered, her widened eyes fixed on Rarity in an emotion that could only be described like awe mixed with bafflement. As for Twilight, she was adjusting her glasses and holding on her temples at alternate times as if she was having an headache.

Meanwhile, Applejack silently wriggled and scurried away from the room, keeping her profile low and holding on her hat with one hand as she ran away from the music room, thusly leaving an awkward silence behind, as Rarity was stared at by the remaining people in the room.

Feeling the sense of wrath and pride fully subsidize, Rarity felt her friends’ stares feeling as heavy as giant blocks of limestones placed onto her chest. She soon realized what she had done, and also quickly understood what was the only sane way to rectify her mistake.

“I think should depart and let her know I am still ready to let her stay, even if she treated me badly before.” Rarity said, as she also set off towards the door and following Applejack’s footsteps, no matter how arrow-like in their speed and direction were.

-Chapter 13- (Re-do)

Sitting on her bed, Rarity contemplated her next move while looking down at her bedroom’s floor and her bare feet.

“Applejack has finally accepted me, although begrudgingly, and my friends are aware and willing to accept me.” She muttered to herself, her left hand massaging her chin. “I have gained the stability needed to resist this for a while. Now I have to tell my parents in order to get the full support I need in order to completely dominate this illness of mine.”

She got up and walked in circles in her room, her eyes still firmly fixed on the floor.

“But it is not going to be easy, considered the entity and gravity of this. They may seriously entertain the idea to disown me, if faced with a full frontal impact.” Rarity said to herself. “So outright stating my attraction to children is not going to benefit me by any stretch of imagination. Perhaps… I could try to start a campaign hinting them about it?”

Rarity stopped to look up at the landscape outside her window, staring at it silently, before shaking it and lowering it to face the floor once more.

“No, that would only lead them to think I have done worse deeds than I actually did.” She said, going back to walk around her room. “Otherwise… could I try to find a study supporting people of my cloth and go from there?”

Rarity sat down on her bed again, massaging her forehead.

“Well, of course that would require some major research efforts in places I may get in trouble for merely looking at…” She said to herself as now squinted her eyes close in order to concentrate.”Come on, you have done this before, there is nothing new here. Introduce them, calmly but still rapidly and see where it goes.”

She looked up, staring almost blankly at the wall in front of her.

“Yeah… but how exactly?”

Before she could elaborate her plan any further, she heard her father’s voice piercing the door’s wood and resonating inside Rarity’s room.

“Move up everyone, it’s lunch time!”

At those words, Rarity fixed up her light blue shirt inside past her belt into her purple skirt, before setting off to walk through the corridors, down the stairs and into the dining room, where she was greeted by the sight of the table decked with a white and red tablecloth; a blue ceramic bowls full of salad; a water pitcher made of transparent glass and decorated with two red stripes; and a white plate oval on which several lemon-coated escalopes rested piled upon each other.

“Where’s Sweetie Belle?” Cookie Crumbles asked as she sat down onto her chair and then serving herself with some salad. “Is she out for lunch?”

“She told and father me she was going to a kebab shop or somesuch with her friends,” Rarity said, as she also sat down, before helping herself with a generous portion of salad using her knife and her fork. “I presume that, even if she were to return soon, she is not going to be famished.”

“That’s true, yeah.” Hondo Flanks said as he took up some salad with his hands and dropped it into his plate, before gripping upon the fork like a hoe and using it to skewer two escalopes, which he then brought to his plate, dripping all the way onto the tablecloth.

“Hondo!” Cookie Crumbles said, shooting daggers at him and tapping her feet.

“What?” he asked as he cut the meat.

“How times did I tell you to bring either plate close to each other before helping yourself with it?” She said, doing just as she said to grab her escalope. “Oil stains take forever to clean, y’know?”

He rolled his eyes and sighed deeply, as he put the escalopes’ plate close to Rarity’s one. Soon after, silence befell the table, the only sounds being the soft munching and crunching that came from the eating, and the occasional sound of water flowing into the glasses.

As Rarity savored the savory taste of meat and the faint acrid flavour of lemon, she went back to her considerations about how to tell her parents about her need to the final piece needed to fully assist her and stop worrying about the risks the paedophilic disorder entinced. She slowly realized what it needed to be done...

“Is something the matter, Rarity?” Cookie Crumbles asked as sudden as a thunder in the clear sky. “You’ve been so quiet of late…”

Rarity -- resisting all her instincts to jolt up and flee like a hen chased by a hungry fox -- gathered her courage and, forcing a tiny grin on her face and a confident composure, she spoke up,

“That is because I have realized that some… mechanism of my mind, shall we say, do not seem to work perfectly well.” Rarity held her right hand onto her chest, her heart increasing its speed to match the level of alert her mind projected. “I tend to look at boys much younger than me, wishing strongly to do lewd stuff with them, up and including sexual congress, and this has, of course, worried me to nearly no end.”

Cookie Crumbles titled her head and frowned, while Hondo Hooves slowly turned his head around, furrowing his left eyebrow. Rarity bit her lip to carry on.

“I am however not quite sure about whether this is actual paedophilia, or an hormonal phase I have magnified to the excess,” She said, holding her right arm forward with her palm open. “I would like to understand its nature and, in case of need, deal with it properly.”

“Rarity, I seriously hope this isn’t a joke from your part.” Cookie Crumbles. “You know that…”

“I am very well aware, mother. Do you think I would be so somber otherwise?” Rarity said with a small groan, for then look up right into her mother’s eyes.

At first, there was hostility and tension, but -- as Rarity used all her might to keep her gaze unwavering and steady -- hostility pulled back slowly and, soon, tension followed, unil Cookie Crumbles’ eyes were framed inside two wrinkly eyelids.

“You’re being honest I see.” Cookie Crumbles said with an od, before getting up to grab the salad bowl. “I’ll look out for a psychologist and a psychiatrist and pray it’ll be over, in a way or another.”

“Ah, is that all?” Hondo Hooves said while holding onto his last bite of salad, before looking sideways at his wife. “What’s the big deal? She said she wanted to get help in the first place, of course it’ll be okay!”

“I’d rather avoid spending a fortune in psychiatrist visits that turn out to be pointless.” She said.

“Do not fret, mother, for I plan to make the most out of each solitary visit.” Rarity declared. “To make so that I will not fall into despair ever again, or into depravity once and for all.”

“Yeah, yeah, now help me in clearing the table.” cookie Crumbles said as she took away her dish and brought in the kitchen. Rarity sighed, as she proceeded to take up her and her father’s dish.

“Well, this went rather smoothly.” Rarity muttered to herself, now depositing the dishes in the kitchen sink. “Pity that I will have to have the obvious stated to me, though.”

Laying on her back onto her bed’s silky sheets and enjoying the cool breeze coming from the outside, Rarity -- wearing a white hip-length nightgown and a pair of pink somewhat lacy panties -- was reading a novel from a book -- the one that Applejack had gifted her to mend the schism between her and Rarity, accompanied by a letter of apologizes -- she had set onto her bent knees.

“‘Indeed, Father Gonzalez,’ he said, as smoothly as he could manage, mentally adding the words ‘you pious prick’ as he did to everything he said to the man.” She muttered to herself as she read in the relative silence of that early summer’s night, one following the late spring’s mental struggles Rarity had faced in order to understand and reconstruct her own identity.

Before she could progress any further in her reading, the compressed sound of a bell tolling victory came from Rarity’s bedside table, prompting her to make a dogear on the page and set the book down onto the floor to instead get a grip onto her still-glowing phone and check who was contacting her and for what purpose. Rapidly going into the message folder, Rarity noticed Pinkie Pie’s name highlighted, and a fragment of her entire message displayed, revealing itself fully only when she tapped a couple of times onto it.

“Hey there Rarity!” It read. “Are you still up? ‘Cuz we’ve played music that fits you well and is also fun to play and also let Twilight have chance to play and that’ll put you and your fears asleep! ‘T all in the link below!”

Looking just below the short message, Rarity saw a string of letters highlighted in blue, which she immediately tapped onto it, in turn causing the screen to go black for a few seconds, only to reveal the music player’s blank screen as the musical piece was downloaded onto her phone. After around a minute of waiting, Rarity’s ears were hit by the sounds of a bassoon being sporadically played for a few briefs seconds, just before being replaced by the sound of hands clapping at a slow rhythm and, then, Sunset’s voice singing.

“I am Beastiality,
I carry the grim rod with me
I am the lady that lords
over you and your kin.
I am so flimsy,
Yet so powerful
And compelling
That your qualms shan't stop me.”

Then, tambourines added themselves to the bassoon’s beat, as a solitary violin playing Fa minor joined, before the other instruments faded, leaving only Sunset's singing voice and the violin.

“I am bestiality,
I carry the grim rod
I am the lady that lords.
over you and your kin.
You shall bow your head
To my wild charm,
And dance at lust's barbaric rhythm.”

Then -- after a brief lyric-less part in which all the instruments came back -- slowly but surely, the bassoon and the violin disappeared as the clapping hands faded, replaced by the sound of a carillon and by Pinkie’s voice.

“You're the guest of honor
of the dance that we're dancing for you.
Here's the dress we made for you!
Lay down your rod and dance around!
And round the turns of a volta
And then another one, and now
you aren't her lady anymore!”

And, just as this was said, the bassoon, the violin and the tambourines joined their sounds together and started to play -- in low key -- an excerpt from a danza, only interrupted by the occasional intervention of the carillon’s chimes.

All of the sudden, the other instruments dropped, only leaving a tambourine being furiously played, accompanied by a couple of whip cracks. Then, a few seconds later, a voice Rarity recognized as Roseluck putting a ‘despicable old lady singing’ impression started to chant.

“I am Fear,
I bear the crown,
I am the people’s lady..
I am so blind and pitiless,
So powerful and loved,
That your innocence shan't stop me!

I am Fear,
I bear the crown,
You shall bow your head
To my bullwhip,
And dance to Terror’s hateful rhythm.”

An instrumental.-only briefly followed, only to answered by the chimes and Pinkie’s voice.

“You're the guest of honor
of the dance that we're dancing for you.
Here's the knot we made for you!
Lay down your whip and dance around!
And round the turns of a volta
And then another one, and now
you aren't our lady anymore!

You're the guest of honor
of the dance that we're dancing for you.
Here's the knot we made for you!
Lay down your whip and dance around!
And round the turns of a volta
And then another one, and now
you aren't our lady anymore”

The violins and the bassoon played the volta another time, this time faster and almost more aggressively. The piece faded once more and all of the instruments started to being played slowly, almost solemnly. Then, finally, after the long and drawn-out piece, much to Rarity’s surprise, Lemon Turner started to sing with the most growling voice she had ever heard him use.

“I am Death,
I bear the crown,
I am everyone’'s lord
I am so cruel,
I am so strong and harsh,
That your walls shan't stop me!

I am Death,
I bear the crown,
You shall bow your head
To my scythe,
And dance to Death's grim rhythm!”

The music kept on going, as solemn and heavy as it had started, droning inside Rarity’s ears like a gloomy march. This was soon interrupted, as Pinkie and her chimes spoke up once more, this time as loudly as possible.

“You're the guest of honor
Of the majestic dance
We are dancing just for you.
Lay down your scythe
And dance round and round.
A turn of a volta
And then another one
And now you aren't time’s lord anymore.

You're the guest of honor
Of the majestic dance
We are dancing just for you.

You're the guest of honor
Of the majestic dance
We are dancing just for you.
You're the guest of honor
Of the majestic dance
We are dancing just for you.
A turn of a volta
And then another one
And now you aren't time’s lord anymore!”

Now, only the carillion's chimes remained, playing a slow, soothing piece.

Rarity sniffled, a sense of warmth radiating from her chest as she slowly but surely processed what her friends had just done for her. Two tears slid down her cheeks, for the first time in weeks wetting her cheeks due to a positive feeling, rather than anguish.

She fell down and sighed deeply, closing her eyes and letting the chimes carry her to a peaceful and untroubled sleep, sure that her greatest worry was not going to chase her the next dawn, nor in the in any of the ones that were going to follow afterwards forevermore.

"Tragoedia Praetexta fabula est, plaudite!" She muttered to herself, before fully falling asleep.

-Bonus Clop chapter-

Author's Note

Here it is the Clop Chapter that never came to fruition due to its awkward positioning in the timeline I planned. As such, this is set in an Alt-Universe where the attack on the villa never happened.

This Chapter Contains:
-Age Play.
-Oral.
-Fingering.
-Diapers.

-Bonus Clop chapter-

Rarity’s fingers and toes could not stop twitching and spasming around at the mere idea of engaging in the lewd activity Lemon Turner had suggested first and invited her to later. Her steps were rapid and long, while the bag full of material she was carrying on her right shoulder as if it was empty and the soft bulk between her legs not hindering her movements in the slightest. Her lower body pulsed lightly with desire, a mighty need she was going to satisfy in a way that had never occurred to her up until then…

Even if it meant to somewhat forgo her usual stance about the matter of copulation to instead enjoy a more occasional partner, one such as Lemon Turner.

“Come you fair girl, come with me,” he said as he swung his bedroom’s door open, revealing a dimly-lit room, the silhouette of a small-double bed, a window with its shutters half-down and a finely carved wall wardrobe being the only objects visible. “The night is young still and we are going to need its all-encompassing mantle to properly enjoy this.”

A light giggle escaped Rarity’s mouth as she rushed inside his bedroom and threw the bag off her shoulder and at to the bed’s free end, before she rapidly unbuttoned her light blue shirt and threw it away in a corner -- thusly revealing her somewhat generous breasts, who energetically bounced and wobbled onto her chest -- before pulling the purple skirt down to then fold it and place it inside one of the bag’s large pockets, thusly making the purple and white striped cloth diaper she was wearing visible.

“Where did you get such a lovely diaper, young and desirable Rarity?” Lemon Turner asked with a hint of quivering desire in his tone, gently poking Rarity’s padded rear end and making it faintly crinkle, causing her to blush slightly. “And what dresses are you going to show to your dearest daddy?”

While Lemon Turner went on to turn on the faux petroleum lamp on his bedside table, Rarity, still twitching, pulled out the folded-up and shrink-wrapped dress from the bag. She then took up the wrap and ripped it apart with her bare hands, for then grasp onto the soft linen and raise to let it unfold in front of Lemon Turner.

It was a pink dress, white frills on the neck and at the hems of its inflated elbow-length sleeves, a pair of pinned-up cloth violets on the chest where her breast’s hardened nipples were going to be, black-and-white buttons on the dress’ neck and on the front of the upper part, while the lower part was little more than a very short light purple skirt that was clearly insufficient in covering up any kind of undergarment, much less a diaper like the one Rarity was wearing. Behind, hidden to Lemon Turner, there was a zipper camouflaged only by its colour.

Without further ado, Rarity unzipped it from top to bottom and rapidly set it onto herself, then placing her hands behind her to skillfully zip the zipper up, thusly fully encasing her into the soft attire she had chosen for the occasion, just before kneeling down slowly. Lemon Turner smirked as he passed his large hand through her hair.̴̴̴

“You are a rather lovely little girl, you know that? But you know what would make you a good girl?” he winked, a chuckle escaping him and echoing a little in the room. “I would like to check upon your diaper… thoughtly.”

Rarity looked up at him, blushing slightly as she felt a surge of her desire spread from her lower parts to her entire body. She crawled towards his bed, climbing up onto it and curling up her arms and legs a bit.

“I-I’m ready…” she said, looking away from his face towards the lit up bedside lamp, as Lemon Turner slowly lifted Rarity’s skirt up, revealing her diaper once more. He started to poke it around her firm buttcheeks, causing a crinkle to comee off from the diaper, before he slowly moved up and started to lightly rub the front of Rarity’s diaper. She squeaked lightly as she felt a pulse of satisfaction spread all inside her and never quite stopping so as long he was busy on rubbing.

“Your diaper feels… clean,” he said with a hiss as he slowly but surely slithered his right hand towards the diaper’s straps. “But perhaps… perhaps I could take a look inside. You never know∼”

Rarity shuddered and giggled lightly while weakly kicking the air, as Lemon Turner slowly undid the straps and lowered her padded undergarment, prompting a cool breeze to blow on Rarity’s meaty labia and causing her to moan and making her cheeks as red as pepper. Soon enough, her entire face took that hue, as Lemon Turner slowly moved his right index inside her humid clam from top to bottom, which in turn prompted Rarity to try to open it up even further by separating her legs.

“You are clean, my little darling,” he said, pulling his finger away as he stared deeply in Rarity’s eyes while he re-did the straps, grinning widely as his trousers’ crotch bulged out. “Now that I checked your diaper, could you be a good enough girl to sit down to have some of daddy’s special milk?”

Warm and pin pricking surges from both her chest and her vagina exploded and soon expanded in her entire body, making her fingers and toes twitch and her teeth bite her lower lip. She slowly nodded, crawling down her bed onto the floor and sitting firmly on her knees to then look up, as Lemon Turner carefully and painstakingly got off his own bed and stood before Rarity, using his left hand to unzip his trousers while the right hand petted and ruffled Rarity’s hair.

“There’s a good little girl…” he said in a mellow voice as he then lowered his trousers -- and with them his bulging black boxers -- revealing his penis at full mast in all its glory to Rarity, who promptly stared at it with a small dazed grin, in turn causing Lemon Turner to slowly push her head closer to his erect dick.

“D-do I have to…” she blushed deeply as she muttered, using her tongue to whip and rub her tongue against his cock’s helmet, which prompted Lemon Turner to grunt lightly in appreciation.

“Come on, little girl,” he muttered. “Open up your fair little mouth and drink daddy’s juice, so that you may grow up big and strong!”

Finally opening her mouth, Rarity let her incisives brush against his member, before finally giving a single blow, prompting Lemon Turner to hiss and moan, as he slowly pulled out, only to pull in a few seconds later once again and starting anew. Rarity shivered and blushed even further, as she felt his ruffle her hair once more, feeling a sense of itching arousal that blended well with the humiliation and sense of helplessness the whole situation gave, to the point she almost felt she was a decade or so younger than she actually was… as young as the boys that had populated her fantasies and just as powerless.

She rolled her eyes and let her mouth be filled with his endowment, letting one of her hands fondle his full balls blindly while the other one slowly crawled past the skirt and inside her diaper to massage herself. She moaned lightly, squirmed under the sensation brought by the act, blushed even deeper for the actions and the half-slurred schmaltzy words Lemon Turner was pronouncing.

Soon enough Rarity started to feel herself leak and drip in her padding, moaning and taking quick breaths as she savored the shivering sensation going up her spinal column and then turning itself into a pinpricking heat, serving as counterpoint to Lemon turner’s moans and grunts. All of the sudden, he started to tremble and shiver visibly, while his length started to throb.

Without the need of him to utter any word by a stuttered “Coming,”Rarity prepared herself to receive his fertile liquid of life directly through her throat and into her stomach, as it did a few seconds later, making Rarity gag a little as tiny drops of salt-tasting tacky warm liquid fell onto her tongue, while most of it traveled very quickly down her esophagus. There was a long, sustained wild howl of release and enjoyment at the act.

She backed her head away and he pulled his cock out, leaving them both panting and silently staring at each other, until he rapidly kneeled and kissed her on her forehead.

“T-that was… intoxicating.” He said, still panting, as he lightly scratched her chin. “Would you like to bring you the same… feeling to you, little one? Do you think you can handle some more?”

Rarity grinned and nodded, immediately hopping onto his bed, spreading her legs out and resting her arms bent onto themselves, letting Lemon Turner undo her diaper’s straps and baring her humid privates to him. The cold air caused Rarity to shiver and lightly kick the air just as Lemon’s fingers nimbly brushing against her labia and her clitoris did, feeling the previously barely-felt itch to increase in its intensity.

“Aaaww, are you cold?” he said while he fully removed his lower clothing and crawled up onto her, setting his chest against her belly and his right onto her generous breasts, while the other one attempted to keep on flickering Rarity’s sweet spot. “Let me heat you up then!”

She squirmed a little,her fingers twitching as the warmth brought by her lust grew, reaching boiling point and causing her thoughts to be obfuscated by her desire. Each touch on her genitalia brought a small shower of her liquid arousal, every movement of her clitoris brought a lip bite and a fastened heartbeat and desirable itching, each playful pinch on her nipples resulted in a lustful moan and a finger twitch. Her arms spasmed as they tried to get a firm grip on him and every hair on her body straightened itself at the chilling humid breath he was expelling.

“You like that? Eh, eh?” Lemon Turner muttered insistently, as his hands kept on stimulating her. “Yes you do, you little powerless girl!”

After minutes that felt like seconds to Rarity, her vision blurred in a mash of dancing stars, her ears hissed like a steam train, her smell captured smells never smelt before, her itching in her lower parts melted and spread by her veins all over her body, her arms dropped limp on the bed and her body loosened quickly, while her mind went blank, overtaken by the bliss. At this point, Rarity could only holler to express her very brief yet totalizing satisfaction.

She then dropped down, patting even harder, but with still lingering passing burning inside her, prompting her to get up and wrap herself around Lemon turner, passionately kissing him on his lips, much to his surprise, as he flailed his arms and struggled for breath for a couple of seconds, before dropping down onto the mattress and reciprocating the passionate kiss with an equally-strong one.

She disengaged him, lightly pushing him away and laying on her back, staring at the ceiling as she felt tiredness filling her.

“T-this… was very much worth it.” she muttered, as Lemon Turner fell down and laid by her side, hugging her sideways. “S-surely we can try again… another time.”

“Do you want to sleep here or do you wish to go home now?” Lemon Turner asked, leaving behind a somewhat tense silence, as the their pants slowed down considerably and their limbs went back to their original consistency.

“Give me a few minutes and I will go back home.” She said a few minutes later, still somewhat panting as she crawled down his bed. “But, still, thanks for the new experience, Lemon Turner. I shall consider iti n the future… well, that, and remember it for when it will not be possible.”

-Chapter 1-

In an inner-town bar called “Cat’s Rest," Rarity was sitting cross-legged at a table. Between her fingers -- although it looked like she was holding it between her long painted nails -- she held an overly adorned white cup of green tea, occasionally resting it on the matching saucer that sat on the leaf green tablecloth that covered the Edwardian-style table before her.

She was sipping on her tea as she listened to her friends’ banter after their latest band practice as the "Rainbooms."

“Ah swear, if Ah practice ‘Jonny Ah Hardly Knew Ya’ one more time, I’m gonna resign,” Applejack said, holding her steaming hot cup of chocolate in her hands, shoulders arched forward as if she was trying to defend her hot drink from any kind of would-be predator wishing to take an unauthorized sip.

“Oh, c’mon!” Rainbow Dash said as she spread her arms open dejectedly, a can of cheap Czech beer in front of her. “People just love it when we play it at parties!”

Applejack groaned and glared at Rainbow Dash from under her hat.

“We played and sang it at one party only once, Dash, and everybody was goin’ to cut their wrist or get a new set of eardrums when we were done,” Applejack said before taking a big sip and slowly putting the cup back on the table, leaving a trace of molten chocolate on her upper lip. “‘sides, we have been playin’ at parties for, what, two months?”

Rarity put her right hand over her mouth, forcing herself to suppress a chuckle.

“Yes, we indeed have been doing this for far too little time to tell what most peoples’ taste in music is, or what might be a pleasant middle ground, for that matter.” Rarity said, taking a small, almost calculated, sip from her cup, clicking her tongue a couple of times to savour its very delicate and sweet taste. “But at least we know that older dance songs are not a well-known or widely-appreciated genre of music.”

“Well, why do you think Ren-nain-sance Fairs are so unpopular with people?”

“Those would be called ‘Renaissance Fairs,' Dash, my dear friend.” Rarity answered, before letting out a sigh, lightly stirring her tea with the mere shaking of the cup. “And, most of the time, it is because the costumes look quite silly to most. You know very well how I see them and the time period they are related to.”

“Whatever Rares,” Rainbow Dash as she crossed her arms and pouted a little in typical Rainbow style. “I know that you like that kind of boring and stuffy stuff. I was just trying to make it clear.”

“I was and am aware,” Rarity said with a small chuckle, slowly putting the cup down on the table, glancing at the leaves at the bottom of the cup before re-establishing eye contact with her friends. “I mean, I do not particularly like rave parties and electronic music, unlike you and Pinkie, but I do not think I have complained, when we tried to play for Vinyl Scratch’s birthday.”

“She kinda saved us from the Dazzlings' magical singing, that’s about the least we could’ve done.” Rainbow Dash frowned and shrugged to the point of burying her neck in her small shoulders. “Don’cha think so?”

Applejack nodded in agreement “Yeah.”

“Point taken,” Rarity said, putting down the spoon and then grabbing the cup again to take another sip, leaving only a few drops and the leaves behind. “Still, we could have refused. It would not have been a display of towering intellect or gratitude, but we could have, on the grounds that we did not play that particular genre of music.. or that we do not particularly appreciate it and we would prefer to not insult her.”

“Yeah. Like, Ah would do that, if Ah was asked to come play music by that guy...” Applejack muttered as she looked left and right with a menacing glare, taking an even more arched posture. “He gives me the shivers, not only for his tastes in music.”

Rainbow Dash leaned her head sideways and arched her eyebrows, while Rarity silently stared.

“Who are you talking about, AJ?”

“Y’know… Lemon Turner and his half-Carribean half-Rock creepy song about his creepy obsession.” Applejack said. “Not only it’s painful to hear, it’s….”

Applejack visibly shivered and shook her head while Rainbow Dash visibly cringed.

“Ah don’t wanna think about it,” She said, rapidly slurping the last of her chocolate in one go.

Rarity reclined her head on her shoulder, looking at Applejack inquisitively, unsure about the gripes her friend had with the song and the person liking it.

“I do not think I have heard of him or that song in particular. May I ask what is it about?” Rarity asked, to which Applejack shook her right index and clicked her tongue.

“I’ll explain it... I guess,” Rainbow Dash said after a deep sigh as she held her right hand over her chest.

“You see, there’s this guy, called Lemon Turner,” Rainbow Dash broke eye contact with Rarity and gripped on the beer can. “He used to go to our school, and, well, he was one of the popular guys, always trendy, always walking along the best girls. Y’know, that kind of stuff.”

"'Used to’?” Rarity said as she put her hand over her chin and bent her back forward to better hear Dash’s words. “What happened? Tell me more, please.”

Rainbow Dash squeezed the beer can, causing her beer to spray a little across the table and on Dash’s shirt. Her face turned into a scowl and she briefly turned around to fake-spit on the floor.

“He told to one of his close friends -- I think it was Roseluck -- that he really wanted to touch his little sister and that he had some problems with keeping it in his pants around children. At first, she had promised not to say anything,” Rainbow Dash let out a small snarl. “But, thankfully, Roseluck later spilled the beans to Sunset Shimmer in return for some cash, and Sunset, for the first and last time before meeting Twilight from the portal, did a good thing and basically rallied up most of the school to chase him out.”

Hearing these words, Rarity felt her heart sink as she recoiled and scowled, briefly setting her hands over her breasts before rapidly putting them down on the table again. She felt struck to the very core by that statement as she was reminded of certain likings and fantasies she had.

“Um… where is he exactly?” Rarity asked, forcing herself to not show insecurity in such a time and in front of her friend talking like that.

“Since his parents had money to spare, he enrolled in Crystal Prep after somebody had photoshopped his face onto a drawing of an orc and wrote, ‘Do not let this sicko close to children,’ under it and then glued that all over the place.” Rainbow Dash let out a little snicker, before scowling once again. “One wonders if Crystal Prep isn’t trying to look like this town’s school for scumbags, or if the building itself attracts guys like him and that nutcase of a principal, Abacus Cinch.”

Rarity forced herself to chuckle.

“Ehehe… yes, that is true, very true…”

“Still, as you can guess, Lemon ain’t gonna walk anywhere close to the school for a loooonng time. Not to mention, just to be sure he isn’t raping children, lotsa people spy on him.” Rainbow Dash continued. “As for his music taste, he likes a band called ‘Oingo Boingo’ or something like that, and they sing songs that mix pop rock and caribbean-like music and one of them is about a guy chasing little girls’ skirts and trying to say he ain’t the bad guy for it.”

Rarity grinned and nodded, her mind not too keen on thinking about the musical tastes of a young man she had never met and, yet, at the same time, sounded familiar… too familiar.

Not feeling comfortable any longer, Rarity looked up at the fancy wooden wall clock behind the bar’s counter, just before dramatically slapping her forehead.

“Oh dear, it’s really late!” Rarity said, as she hastily grabbed a couple of bills from her pursue in her skirt’s pocket and slammed them on the table. “I must get going. Bye Applejack! Bye Rainbow Dash!”

Both Rarity’s friends jumped up, a little startled, before staring confused at her.

“Um… see ya tomorrow?”

“Bye, Rares!”

And Rarity waved her right hand towards them, not even turning around as she quickly stepped out of the bar into the half-empty street at sunset.

In an Art Decò-styled suburban villa, inside her small-ish bedroom, Rarity was rolling in her bed under the silky sheets, in an attempt to find comfort that kept escaping her.

"What do I really wish?" She whispered to herself, just after a single roll. "In light of that, who am I?"

Rarity thought that she was happy and content with being a teenage girl growing up in an adult woman. She was a lover -- and aspiring designer and maker -- of fashion, of History, of the art of music both old and recent.

In all, one could say that she had a good personality and balanced interests.

Now... now she wasn't all that sure about said balance.

She had realized that her fantasies tended to slowly shift away from the sculptured bodies of film actors or good-looking boys her age, to little boys whose age could be counted on a single hand. Imagining them looking up at her, eyes wide, faces with nary a hair or a pimple, a demeanor of crystal-clear vulnerability, enticed Rarity just as much as imaging to enjoy contact with a handsome man.

Back when they first appeared, when she was eleven, she had not taken heed at her fantasies and weird feelings at first, believing them to be mere sparks of unusual sexual desire caused by her raging and ill-balanced hormones. She was sure that it was going to pass and disappear like ashes in volcanic sand, or to at least leave an unimpressive mark on Rarity’s personal history, another of her efforts to defeat demons born of lust for power, like the Dazzlings and their deamonic flying seahorse forms, desire for knowledge coupled with lack of inhibitions like Twilight Sparkle's alter ego Midnight Sparkle, or plain and simple lack of certain moral values, like old Sunset Shimmer.

But, as time passed, her fantasies about little boys regularly came back like swallows to their young, and she began to have doubts about herself and her morality. Until that point, though, they had not been more than a few passing thoughts, thoughts that occupied her mind during night so silent that she could not sleep properly. Rainbow Dash’s account of Lemon Turner’s story was just the straw that broke the camel’s back on the matter.

"Am I... a kiddy fiddler? A-a paedophile?" she asked to herself, biting her lip lightly as she rolled around. "I-is part of my lust really directed at the ones incapable of feeling it? N-no... that can't be right. I-if I were, I would have kidnapped and violated one already, like in the stories… right?"

Now sitting up , Rarity looked up at the ceiling weakly, smiling, her uneasiness slowed but not properly contained. Rarity’s grin vanished, and she bowed her head slowly, silently staring at the floor while she felt the preoccupation inside her take the forefront. Rarity shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes as she felt her heart clenching and her own soul wince as if it had been ripped off and crumpled into a ball like waste paper.

"Who am I kidding? I am just waiting for the time to strike. For a crying little boy to come looking for his mommy or for a toddler that has just started toilet training to innocently ask me for a candy from a bag I am eating from.” Rarity's tears grew in size, as they started to slowly run down her cheeks and as she began to sob. "I am just waiting for that to happen, so that I may fool some crying little one into thinking that I am going to give him back to his mother, all while I silently plan how to abuse his tender body. I am just waiting to make the young child think I have a van full of delicious treats jus --"

Rarity roared and gave herself a mighty slap, leaving a red mark behind on her snow white skin before shaking her head.

“You aren’t even sure, and you already think that lowly of yourself?” She scolded herself, forcing back her tears. “I mean, what do you really know about this? I mean, besides the worst and most obvious part? Absolutely nothing, that’s the answer!”

Rarity reflected in silence. The rustling of the leaves outside and an owl’s call were the only sounds loud enough to break the otherwise perfect peaceful silence of the night, reminding her just how late in the night it was.

Once the few tears she had shed had dried off enough, Rarity sighed, as she fully sat up, pulled off her red pyjama trousers, and stared at the window for a full minute of reflection.

“Yes, I actually know very little about this, I should really do my research, before spouting such terrifying nonsense about myself.” she said, before she laid down, violently dragging the covers over her and laying on her chin, closing her eyes.

“That is, if tomorrow morning I will still pose this question to myself,” she muttered, mere minutes before fully falling asleep.

Not too long after Dawn in robe of saffron had hastened from the peaks of the high mountains, Rarity had already prepared herself for another day in her life as a student, but her mind was not forgetful of its own duels.

In any other day, at such an hour, Rarity’s mind would have been mostly concentrated on the lesson at hand, taking notes, carefully listening to the teacher’s words and- if the occasion to do so presented itself- mentally repeat the most complex concepts of the explanation currently ongoing and, if really in need, ask the teacher for clarifications.

But on that day, that particular day, Rarity- with her hands joined together in a way that formed some kind of stand for her chin- was staring at the teacher scribbling the essential concepts of Cartesian and Pascalian Philosophy, but she was not absorbing any of the information presented to her, for her mind was traveling somewhere else, in a place closer to the Hyperuranium.

“What if… what if not doing… ‘that’ was not part of the provisional morality?” Rarity thought, before rapidly slapping herself with her left hand, shaking her head afterward.

“Concentrate! This is not the time or place to think about that!” She muttered to herself, as she undid the hand stand and grabbed both pen and paper, rapidly writing down some notes for the current lesson, which was about Pascal’s God’s Bet. As she listened to the teacher explaining it, Rarity’s mind could not help but subconsciously make connections about her own personal experiences, of the times she had to face all-or-nothing situations- even if on topics of a much smaller importance and magnitude- something that was helping her to keep her mind distracted from what was that time’s most dreaded topic.

Then the hour’s end bell rang, and the teacher let out a loud sigh, as he closed the book from which he was reading from with a single flop of his right hand and- after swiftly taking the register with his free hand- left the room, dryly saying “Have a good rest of the day.”

All of a sudden, the relatively disciplined silence that had reigned up to that point in the classroom was dethroned, replaced by a bustling chatter that made Rarity snap out of her concentration harder than the bell had. With her mind once again free, it went back to thinking about the terrifying subject of her liking.

“Quick! Talk with somebody!” She muttered to herself, as lewd images from her fantasy heavily distorted by her apprehension played in the back of her head. She kept looking, seeing Fluttershy busy in furiously scribbling what Rarity assumed were notes taken from Billy Cobra’s exercise book; Drama Letter and Sunset rapidly stacking up books and pencil cases on their desks to make a wall against the upcoming teacher; Twilight silently reading from a book; and Velvet Sky both holding a packed conversation with Octavia and scribbling notes at the same time.

“Alright, let us get to Twilight, she seems to be only one that is not really busy,” Rarity muttered to herself, as she strode through the alley between desks to Twilight’s seat, which was in the front row close to the door. As she did so, the horrible and yet enticing images kept flashing in her mind all the way through, causing her to bite on her lip and quickly and nervously poke Twilight’s shoulder, in turn causing Twilight to jolt up- sending her glasses off her nose onto the desk’s surface- and gasp.

“Ah!” Twilight said, as rapidly put her glasses back on her nose and turned around towards Rarity with a faint blush. “You scared me!”

“Oh, sorry Twilight, I did not mean to do so,” Rarity said with a small forced grin on her face as she sat on the empty chair nearby with a fluid and elegant movement of hips and arms. “I just wanted to salute you.”

“Oh! Okay then,” Twilight said, nervously giggling, as she adjusted her glasses again and delicately set her fallen book on the desk’s top. “Do you need anything?”

Rarity strongly wished to state that she was just desperate to talk with somebody to shoo away her current worries, but she bit her lip and squinted her eyes, briefly looked away and then turned around to face Twilight again.

“Well… um, you see... “ She said, mumbling as she tried to come up with a topic to use to strike up a conversation with Twilight, fiddling with her fingers at lighting speed. Twilight kept adjusting her glasses, looking down at the floor silently.

Feeling the awkwardness between her and Twilight and the tension inside her rising, Rarity had an idea to both talk until the teacher arrived and have a clue about what she had asked herself the night before.

“Um… Twilight, I know that you dislike to be thought as an omnidisciplinarian gal, but…” Rarity blushed a little at the thought of asking that, but she gathered her strength and spoke up. “Do you happen to have a psychiatry catalogue? You know, like some kind of list of the most common mental illnesses... you see, it is for a story I am writing.”

Twilight chuckled weakly as she rose her head and turned her head three quarters towards Rarity.

“Actually, I do. My brother tried his hand in the subject and he had bought a catalogue, before deciding that psychology and or psychiatry weren’t his call at all,” she said. “I could lend you the catalogue, or any other book on the subject, if you want to. Even this afternoon, if you wish so.”

“Oh? Well, that’s interesting and, yes, I would like to pick it up as soon as I can,” Rarity said, before noticing the teacher’s shape looming from the door. “But now I must be back at my seat. Bye!”

And, with that, like a deer in a meadow, Rarity returned to her desk and sat down, ready to fully focus herself on the lesson at hand.

-Chapter 9-

Rarity looked all around her as she walked around the main hall of the villa -- a room with ceiling coffers up above; floreal golden stuccos covering the borders of the doors’ niches and ionian columns made of plaster framing the aforementioned doors; walls painted with brightly-coloured and nearly pristine frescoes depicting Bacchus and Arianne on a golden chariot pulled by four white horses and four donkeys, said chariot was followed by a cortège composed by naked muscular men playing flutes, trombones, war horns and castanets, drunken horned satyrs, and dancing sylvan nymphs; the floor a smooth composition of pink and yellow granite placed in concentric squares, with a stylized Vandean cross made of obsidian in the center of the hall -- which was currently full of people chattering together, drinking beverages and cocktails of varying complexity and gradation, eating small rectangles of stuffed flatbreads or slices of pepper pie or handfuls of chips of mixed flavours from paper dishes whose colours matched Crystal Prep’s livery.

Rarity waded with aplomb through the crowd, a plastic glass of Bloody Mary in her right hand and her left one used to poke shoulders and delicately push people’s busts aside, rapidly excusing herself with the importuned ones every time she did either of these acts. After a few minutes navigating like inside the sea of people, Rarity managed to get to the much simpler-looking buffet room -- one with pompeian red walls plus spiral-engraved light grey stone skirting board and a floor made of yellow granite -- where, on four broad tables clad in purple and yellow felt tablecloth, an equal number of bowls full of popcorns and multiple varieties and double the amount of trays containing both flatbread pieces and slices of valdostana and pepper pie, with a pile of yellow and red dishes piled up in each table’s corner.

Rarity noticed Sunset taking a slice of valdostana and Lemon Zest -- dressed in a turquoise shirt, white undershirt and lavender long skirt -- picking up two slices of pepper pie and setting them onto her own plate.

“Hello there Sunset,” Rarity said, lightly waving her free hand towards her friend. “And hello there, it is good to see that our past struggles haven’t created an unfillable rift between us.”

“Hello Rarity,” Sunset said while putting her dish onto the table, using her left hand to embrace Lemon Zest’s hip and her right hand to point to Lemon’s chest. “Rarity, meet Lemon Zest again. Lemon Zest, meet Rarity.”

Rarity stretched her hand out -- mirroring Zest’s action -- and grasped onto it, delicately shaking it.

“Nice to meet you, Zest.”

“Pleasure’s mine Rarity.”

“So,” Rarity said, taking a small sip from her drink. “What brought you to join us? Was the invitation from my dear friend Pinkie Pie alone? And, are more people from your Academy going to come and join us later?”

Lemon Zest took a rather large bite off one of her two slices, as she put her paper dish onto one of her forearms and used her free hand to extract her phone from her skirt’s only pocket and turning it on with the pression of a semi-hidden button, then unlocking it with the three taps done in quick succession.

“Yeah. Everyone’s gonna come, only Sugarcoat refused to. Just lemme take a look..” Lemon Zest said, slowly squinting her eyes as she tapped some more. “Ah! There it is, they’re gonna come in twenty minutes or so. ‘Expect a major surprise,’ says Lemon Turner.”

Rarity froze for a few seconds, before rapidly shaking her head and taking a big sip, now trying to savour the vodka’s taste coupled with the tomato juice.

“Ah, a surprise? Well, hope it’ll be a good surprise!” Sunset Shimmer said.

“Uh, that is a really good news to hear,” Rarity said while rapidly nodding. “We are looking forward to their coming.”

Lemon Zest nimbly put her phone back in the pocket and grabbed her dish again, taking up the half-eaten slice of before and disorderly devouring it in one go. Meanwhile, Sunset took a nibble off her valdostana, thusly leaving only the sound of loud chatter from the other guests behind.

Rarity drunk most of her blood-coloured drink, delicately wiping her upper lip with her right index before speaking up.

“What time is it?” Rarity asked. “Pinkie Pie told us to gather in the garden at around half past nine and prepare ourselves for the show we are going to give…”

Lemon Zest set the dish away and pulled her phone away, repeating the routine all over again.

“It’s five past nine.” She said. “Also, are you two really going to make music tonight?”

“Not really, it’s actually me, her, Pinkie Pie and three other people.” Sunset Shimmer said, scratching the back of her head while she weakly chuckled. “Trouble is, one of us, Applejack, isn’t exactly in the best of moods because we’ve argued a few days ago.”

Rarity recoiled a little, her heart sinking and a tear forming in her right eye, reminded of the event that caused the aforementioned refusal by one of her friends to have any kind of contact with her -- up and including giving a musical performance with her.

“Ah, I can see that. Reminds me of the times when Upper Crust used to play in the school band,” Lemon Zest said, covering her mouth with one hand to reduce her giggling. “He was pretty bad at playing the drums but always insisted to sing the Tercios’ Hymn all the time. Oh the face and the reaction he made when we managed to get Cinch to personally pick Hussar Pike over him!”

“I can only imagine.” Rarity stated dryly. “I take it was rather entertaining, thought.”

“Oh yeah, he was really funny ‘n’ all!” Lemon Zest said, before pausing to grab the last remaining slice of pepper pie and consuming it with a single bite.

“Ah, I see. Anyways, now we’re going to see if Applejack is going to get over it,” Sunset shimmer said hastily, grabbing Rarity’s right hand and dragging her away. “See you in half an hour!”

“See you later alligator!” Lemon Zest said while turning towards the chips’ bowls, just before proceeding to take handfuls after handful of them to set them in her plate.

Rarity was guided out of the buffet room and brought diagonally through the still-crowded main hall and brought to the loggia -- which had white corinthian columns alternated by red doric ones serving as borders to narrow pumice paths with a bronze tub serving as water collector for the copper fountain, which was shaped after a triton spilling water over a grotesque-looking fish in the center of the crossroad, with the rest of the courtyard covered in grass and tidy low bushes -- where the amount of traffic was inferior. There Rarity spotted Pinkie Pie opening up a white van’s door and Applejack stood on a column, amiably chatting with Roseluck.

Sunset let Rarity’s hand go, rushing through the loggia’s corridor towards Pinkie Pie, who immediately jumped off the van and waved visibly. Rarity followed suit.

“Hai Sunny! Hai Rarity!” She said. “How’re you doing? Do you like this party so far?”

“Yes I do.” Rarity stated.

“Me too, but we gotta talk about the musical show we’re gonna put on,” Sunset hastily added, before leaning forward and whispering. “Is AJ up for tonight or not?”

“I think yes. Well, okay, she said that she’ll play if she doesn’t see Rarity around, so maybe she could put a disguise on…” Pinkie said as she walked back into the van, causing Sunset and Rarity to nervously chuckle.

“If only it were that easy…” Sunset said with her head bowed, with Rarity adding sadly. “Indeed…”

Sunset shook her head and rose it again and turned around towards where she came from.

“Anyways, thanks anyways Pinkie. Guess we’ll have to try to convince her to play music with us all.” She said, half-turning her bust and gesturing towards Rarity. “C’mon, let’s get going.”

Rarity nodded and followed Sunset’s footsteps through on the stone path leading to the other side of the loggia. As she did so, she could hear the two girls’ voices get louder and louder at every step.

“And so he stood there and was like ‘Whadda mean, you don’t actually have any black roses in stock?’ and then went on to rant on how ‘unprofessional’ I was and even tried to call the manager on me.” Roseluck was saying with a hint of giggling in her voice, her left elbow resting against her side as the palm of the respective hand rhythmically closed and opened with grace, while Applejack nodded along, still resting against one of the columns.

“I feel ya Rose,” Applejack said. “ Once two guys pulled over and stopped by the fence, thinkin’ mah farm was a farm holiday resort or somethin’ and insisted on gettin’ a bed and a basket of apples outta us.”

“Excuse my interruption, but I gotta ask a real important and quick question,” Sunset said with her right index rose and her right leg forward. She then turned her head to face a somewhat disgruntled-looking applejack. “AJ, would you be willing to close an eye over Rarity’s presence and join the band tonight? Please? For old times’ sake?”

As Roseluck jumped up startled and nearly crashed inside a niche containing a bronze copy of Donatello’s David, Applejack snapped her head around, teeth baring and a wrinkled forehead, as she snarled “No!”

Rarity recoiled, while Sunset stood her ground, letting out an annoyed sigh.

“Look, if you were just uncomfortable with her standing around with you, that’d be more understandable.” Sunset said with a scolding tone. “But reacting like this? She isn’t nor she has done anything wrong at all, why do you have to treat her like this?!”

“Ya know why!” Applejack said “Ah’m not gonna tell ya one more time!”

Once she had recovered from the shout’s strength and made once more peace with its implication, Rarity walked silently away from the ongoing debate between Applejack and Sunset Shimmer back to Pinkie Pie -- who was busy intently staring at the still-going argument from afar with a roll of cables coiled around her forearms -- and her white van.

“Uh… what’s up?” Pinkie asked, as she hurriedly unrolled the cables up, causing them to drop on the stone floor below with a soft thump.

“They are arguing over whether Applejack is right in wishing to not let me play music at her side and, by extensions, if she is right in ostracizing me out of her and my other friends’ lives.” Rarity said after a deep sigh accompanied by chest-holding. “I wish she would see my point, for what actually am, and stop being so… unwavering in her judgment.”

“Pinkie Pie stepped forward and wrapped her right arm around Rarity’s shoulder, resting her hand onto Rarity’s left shoulder.

“I’m sure she’ll change mind sooner or later,” Pinkie said, massaging Rarity’s shoulder lightly. “Because, hey, she may be mad now but I’m sure that, deep down, she doesn’t really want to be…”

All of the sudden, the late evening’s relative quietness was broken by a the sound of a clacson. Jumping high up in the air in startment, Pinkie Pie broke the arm-wrapping to rapidly run away following the sound’s source, while Rarity simply snapped her head and torso around to look behind her, and she saw a wall of headlights coming increasingly closer to the loggia’s perimeter -- namely the piece of nude clay in front of the aforementioned where the white technical van was parked -- and only vague shapes of persons visible.

However Rarity soon discovered that the upcoming experience was more auditive then visive: a trombone produced a deep note and, soon, another couple of them answered in kind with an even deeper tone accompanied by a drum’s single beat, this pattern repeating itself a couple of times, before being replaced by the sound of violins being played with rapid -- almost nervous in fact -- tract that produced a dissonant symphony when soon coupled by the trombones.

“What’s going on?” Pinkie asked. “And what kind of gloomy and scary music is that?”

Rarity bit her lip as she remembered the tune.

“I-I recognize this music… it is the Dies Irae… played by an orchestra.” Rarity said. “I do not know who is playing this, but something tells me he is not planning to bring gifts.”

As the music added the sound of an organ played at lower keys -- which reinforced it even further -- and the broken violins slowly mended sounds into a single sweeping arch, Rarity could hear people rushing out of the villa’s majestic rooms to go to their current position in the scabre pebble-covered parking lot. The headlights reached the point where Rarity and the others were forced to avert their eyes, lest they suffered permanent damage to their eyes.

“W-who’s there?” Somebody in the crowd asked shouting.

Before anyone could answer, there was a sudden peak, as the violins’ sounds fully merged together, creating a loud and sweeping arch, soon followed by the rapid-fire sound of marching drums and, then, trombone-organ mash-up, which covered everyone’s voice and even forced some to kneel down before the sound’s might disturbing their eardrums and ricocheting inside their auditory duct, thus forcing those unfortunate souls to obstruct their ears using their hands.

A few lights were turned off, finally allowing Rarity and some others to look up and actually asses the booming and blindingly bright invader’s identity. At his feet he wore brown boots with bronze buckles and leather black string, his black trousers with a anthracite line running on each leg’s external side covering his legs until they disappeared inside the boots, and his shins covered even further by an horizontally-striped dark red and charcoal coat cape tied close by a dark born leather string close to his neck, his visible torso revealing a bordeaux coat on top of a navy blue shirt, his hands -- which were gripping on a cane topped by a small bronze globe -- covered in black gloves with a white lemon sewn on their top, and, finally, a black cardinal’s hat resting onto his head, nearly covering all of his red hair.

“Ah.” He said, his voice taking a nearly theatrical tone.”I see that you have come to honour me, Lemon Turner of the house of Citri-Vasca, and bask in my presence. Or is this chaotic gathering and all of this commotion supposed to be some manner of lynch mob?”

Whispers came from the crowd, as Lemon Turner slowly turned himself around to face the cars -- the music starting up again at a lower volume as he did so.

“Sadly for the ones craving to spill my blood for a nonsensical cause, my arrival was not without companionship,” He said, as the muffled sound of car doors being slowly opened and then violently closed could be barely heard in the background. “I came here with some assistants, young men and fair women who were quite willing and eager to join my very own Strafexpedition against some of the ones that have committed nefarious deeds against me.”

Rarity gulped as his words’ meaning sunk in her, while the other bystanders either frantically whispered and muttered between each other, or sent insults and curses against Lemon and his lot. As this happened, another pair of headlights were turned off, which allowed everyone to see the upcoming spectacle.

A large maniple walked the goose step forward at the music’s brooding march rhythm. The ones at the column’s sides -- wearing bordeaux shirts, black coats and dark blue trousers if they were boys, while the girls worn similar shirts but had ditched the trousers in favour of purple tartan long skirts and dark blue scarfs -- brandished long poles as they were pikes, while the ones in the center had more variated attires, thusly allowing easier recognition.

On the column’s right wing, Sunny Flare was wearing dark purple long socks, a long blue skirt and a dark blue coat over a light blue sweater, her hair gathered in a half-baked bun and her right hand closed in a fist close to her chest -- a look that made her resemble her infamous mother strongly. In the center, Sour Sweet, dressed in a plum knee-lenght overcoat was acting as an ensign, carrying a banner which depicted a black hand doing the horns while it held onto a crown of spines -- three blood drops radially coming out of it -- on a white background, while from the golden trim stitched to the lower part of the banner three golden trinkets lightly flailed in the air: a bundle of arrows plus a yoke, a two-headed eagle and a hooked cross. Finally, on the left wing, Moondancer marched forward in a stilted way due to her sandals’ high heels and her peculiar attire -- a white and lavender peplum coupled with golden bracelets going from her wrists to her elbow.

Lemon Turner rose his cane-holding left hand high up in the air and, as if they were one, the group abruptly stopped in front of the exhagitated crowd of party guests, a few meters of muddy ground separating them.

Applejack, once she recovered from the sound shockwave, sprung up snarling with bared teeth, only to be quickly intercepted and barely held back by the combined might contained in Roseluck and Bon Bon’s arms

Rainbow Dash made herself way by shoving people away until she finally managed to get in the small space separating the large group from the neatly-organized Crystal Prep’s square formation.

“C’me here Lemon, “ Rainbow Dash cried out while shaking her first against him. “You gotta pay! You’ve made my friend Rarity feel like a monster ‘cuz you --”

“If you were aware of what is the wisest decision here you would not dare to pick a fight on such a matter in such a place.” Lemon Turner said calmly, interrupting Rainbow Dash. “I suggest you to break off and organize your opposition with the woman commonly known as Roseluck, a fitting name, considered her thorns, but not as fitting a name as aconitum.”

A general gasp followed, as Roseluck’s gaze morphed into a stare.

“Take this!” Roseluck said, as she loosened her grip on Applejack’s arm, thusly allowing her to run forward, Bon Bon dragged along in tow, which caused Lemon Turner to scoff and to rapidly lower his cane.

“Let us get over this then. You are free to pursue your own personal objectives now.” He said as he did so.

Soon after, the square broke up, as the cane-wielders charged forward into the crowd, poles lowered like lances in rest, pushing the crowd back into the loggia and into the villa proper, and as the crystal academics in the center ran forward and grappled onto their targets, tackling them down as they let out various battlecries that melded together to create a truly fearsome roar.

Rarity -- using a void that had created itself in the general rout -- jumped away from the ongoing polemen charge to press herself against a wall, watching in horror and shock and listening with sorrow to the din of violent encoutners, as the former festivities degenerated into a brawl -- a rather one-sided one at that -- between scholastical institutions.

“L-Lemon… why did you… did you…” Rarity muttered to herself as she watched the loosened formation encircling, pushing people inside the villa thanks to the pole’s length or forming knots of people overwhelming a solitary, perceived foe and, depending on how charitable they felt, insulting and spitting on them or outright resorting to let their fists and their kicks talk for them.

In particular, Rarity noticed that Sunset and Roseluck getting their arms wrestled on their backs by two girls and one girl and one boy respectively and brought at Lemon Turner’s presence. Rarity tip-toed her way towards them, attempting to hide behind one of the nearby columns in order to overhear the upcoming conversation.

“Not feeling as proud as before, are we?” Lemon Turner said, forcefully raising Roseluck’s chin with his right hand. “And I see that the one that has accepted this disgusting overgrown and talking cross between a spiny rose bush and a venomous aconitus shrub’s money has not proceeded to give herself a proper burial. Do undertakers have decided to raise tariffs too high for your own pockets?”

“I’ve changed since then Lemon!” Sunset Shimmer shouted as she wiggled in the grip of Lemon Turner’s mooks. “I’m not the gal I was back then. Besides, it’s all in the past, you should get over it!”

Lemon Turner arched one of his eyebrows.

“Am I having auditive hallucinations, or is it this true?” He said with acidity. “How can I get over it, if your action nearly ended my entire life in more ways than one? I was nearly killed by a trio of reasonless brutes and I was ostracized out of ‘your’ school for reasons that should have not concerned you.”

“Well, it was a big mistake from my part then, alright?” Sunset Shimmer said with a deep sigh, as Lemon Turner stopped grabbing Roseluck’s chin to instead lean onto his cane. “Look, I understand that you may be pissed towards me, Roseluck and whatever other person may have done wrong to you in the past, but is calling people up to crash a party and attack the guests really the most constructive way to let out your anger?”

“Of course it is!” He said with a scoff, tapping his cane onto the muddy ground. “Why would I have bothered with recruiting and instructing many a schoolmates, if not to get you two and…”

“What?!” Roseluck shouted indignated. “You are telling me your entire reason to pull off all of that was to just get us two and everybody else here at the party was just collateral damage?”

Lemon Turner slowly turned towards Roseluck and then lightly knocked his cane onto her head, thus causing her lips to loosen a groan of pain.

“The term you may be looking for is ‘acceptable casualties,’ but, yes, that is actually a good description of my goal here.” He said, inflating his chest a little and setting one of his hands closed in a fist onto his chest. “I just wanted to make sure I was going to get you two and, preferably, yank you out of a pleasant situation in doing so.”

Tense silence remained behind for a few seconds, allowing Rarity to slowly but surely elaborate what she was seeing -- not to mention, allowing her to try to subdue her anger at Lemon’s behaviour towards Sunset -- by taking deep breaths and rapidly winking her eyes while slowly turning her head left and right, just before looking back at the ongoing scene.

“If that is so, how better are you from past me?” Sunset asked. “How does recruiting some people and putting them into some kind of organized formation in order to mob two people you hate into submission and then let them run off loose, free to beat up whoever they want to without distinction, differs from getting an entire school to push away and insult a single individual because he suffers of something he cannot control?”

Lemon Turner visibly recoiled, his overcoat adding a touch of drama to his gesture -- a touch that could only come from the tragedies of old -- made with his right arm passing over the eyes and his feet rapidly shifting position as if he was engaged in some kind of musicless ball.

“I have my reasons to believe that the violence will be kept at a mini-” He said, just before before being interrupted by shout, one much louder than the others that were coming out the villa, soon followed by Twilight falling face first onto the stone floor below, her ragged-up shirt missing a sleeve and her purple skirt showing rips all over the hem, her glasses nowhere to be seen and her right cheek spoiled by a small bleeding gash. With a gasp, Rarity ran towards her, as Sunset stared petrified, while her jailors and Lemon Turner looked at her rather perplexed.

However, Rarity was slower than Twilight’s attackers -- namely Sunny Flare and a mostly-naked Moondancer -- who immediately proceeded to jump off the small doorstep and close next to a crawling Twilight. Moondancer grabbed Twilight by her shoulders, using her arms to make an U-shaped grip that forced the assailed girl to rest her back onto Moondancer’s bare chest and leaving only her legs free to kick the air in vain.

“No! Leave her alone!” Rarity cried out, her arms stretched out towards Twilight and her legs pushing themselves to their limit in order to get her faster.

“Why should we?” Sunny Flare said, positioning herself at a whimpering Twilight’s side and turning her head towards Rarity, a ferocious grin nearly occupying her face. She gave one slow, almost taunting, near kick close to Twilight’s ribcage. “Wanna join her?”

Rarity, still on the run, tried to quickly put on the most menacing look she could muster, her hands lowered and closed into fists.

“No, I-” she was interrupted by a strong slap on the face whose strength caused Rarity to lose balance and violently fall onto her rear end and nearly hit her head against the loggia’s low wall. Her vision blurred up for the pain, prompting her to try to massage it away with her hand.

“Was I clear?” Sunny Flare said out loud as she kicked Twilight in her ribcase, prompting the latter to cry out in pain and to start to wail and sob unctrollably.

“Listen up, Sunny of the house of Cinch!” Lemon Turner shouted. “Either you cease your assault onto Twilight, or…”

“What are you gonna do, call my mom?” She said, chuckling evilly as she gave another kick to Twilight, this time on her hip. “As if she’d care about me beating Twilight up! She’d be so, so, so happy to hear that I’ve punished a defector the way it should be treated.”

“Ah, so you are wishing to engage in infighting?! So be it!”” He shouted. “Vichians, get those maenads out of my sight!”

Rarity slowly and carefully set one hand on the floor and one on the wall, then pushed herself up to sit on top of the loggia’s wall, trying to ignore the sore pain she was feeling in the coccyx as she did so. By doing so, she saw Roseluck and susnet being immediately freed from the four henchmen who -- after a rapid salute to Lemon -- turned around and charged forward towards Moondancer and Sunny Flare. The latter gave one last kick in the ribs to an already-prostrated and crying Twilight, just before turning towards the charging four and taking a stance preparing her for melee, the former immediately left her grip onto Twilight, which caused the assaulted girl to fall down like a ragdoll and then curl up to massage the offended areas, to instead turn her back around and flee inside the hustle in the villa.

“Where are you going you a-hole?!” Sunny Flare said, once she realized she had been left at her own devices, while she threw a couple of punched to the air in front of her. “I need help here!”

“As far as I can get from a brawl!” Moondancer said as she rapidly closed the villa’s door behind her. To the door slamming followed the slight cracking sound of Sunny Flare being hit on the nose by a punch of one of Lemon’s allies, which made her bend over to hold her nose -- a few seconds of liberty soon preceded by the only girl in the group grabbing her by the waist and locking her legs down and one of the guys holding her by her wrists with the grip of a single hand.

Soon after, Lemon Turner rushed forwards towards Twilight, kneeling next to her as soon as he was nearby, light brushing his gloved hand over Twilight’s damaged facial features. Rarity wobbly got up and walked toward him and Twilight.

“How are you feeling? Did you lose your glasses completely or did you manage to hide them away before being savagely attacked?” He asked.

“I-I… I feel v-very bad…” She whimpered in pain. “A-and t-they broke m-my glasses… I’d l-like some help..”

He turned his head to glare at Moondancer and Sunny Flare, before looking back at Twilight, a small smile on his face as he set his right hand behind her back and using his free hand to grab Twilight’s left hand to help her stand. Rarity went closer and grabbed Twilight’s free hand, ultimately allowing Twilight to sit up properly.

“Come on, it is alright,” he muttered as he slowly caressed Twilight’s face. “I am here, and so is your friend Rarity.”

“Yes, it is true,” Rarity said, kneeling next to her beaten friend. “You do not seem to be lethally wound, although a triage from trained professionals would clear any shdow of doubt.”

While Twilight lightly trembled, Lemon Turner nodded in agreement.

“Thinking about it, it indeed would be wise to do so,” Lemon Turner said as he lightly pulled Twilight up by her arm. “Lend me a hand to get her up please.”
Rarity nodded and grasped Twilight’s right hand, before quickly springing up and pulling her upwards, for the lighting-quick set her shoulders underneath Twilight’s arm, allowing it to rest limply onto her shoulders.

“I-I can w-walk…” Twilight protested weakly as she was slowly carried forward into the small garden. “I-I just don’t feel t-too well…”

“Nonsense!” Lemon Turner said as he kept walking forward, past the fountain and closer to his car. “You clearly need at least one person to support you in walking.”