Author's Note

Hello, first I just want to apologize that this took so long. I was working on a side project and that made this take a bit longer than I intended. The next chapter is going to be a therapy sessions chapter, and I intend to make it shorter than the last one, so it shouldn't be long till that is done. Tell me if you find any issues, and thanks for reading!

Chapter Ten: Inquiry, Part Three.

Scootaloo, at the sound of Pinkamena’s voice, slightly opened her eyes. Her face relaxed as she looked up at her, squinting a bit as she tried to work out the details of her face. She rapidly blinked her eyes, widening as she recognized who she was looking at.

“Pinkie Pie? Why is your hair like that?”

She only briefly glared at the young girl in response, giving a disapproving grunt as she extended her hand to her. Scootaloo looked at Pinkamena quizzically, before looking at her hand, a bit more caution as she did. She reached up and grabbed her hand, noticing how rough her hand was. She got to her feet, wincing a bit as the dull pain was still present.

*I’m glad I held back as much as I did, any harder and I would have fractured her spine at the least. Still, why did she attack me?*

“Sorry about slamming you into the ground like that, I don’t react well to people stabbing me.” She said sarcastically, but there was a bit of shame in her voice.

“And sorry about stabbing you, I thought you were a thief or something.” Scootaloo said nervously, her eyes wandering to the stab wound. She noticed the fresh blood around the area that was stabbed, and the surprising lack of it. She also noticed slight bits of steam that was coming off of it, it was barely even bleeding anymore. Her mouth opened and stayed agape for a few seconds in astonishment, trying to work out in her head how that was possible.

“What the hell is going on with you-”

“Don’t worry about it. What are you doing in Rainbow’s apartment?” Pinkamena responded dismissively, putting her hands in her pockets and clenching them as she tried to ignore the adrenaline pumping through her body after getting stabbed.

Scootaloo stared at her for a moment, noticing immediately this was not the Pinkie Pie she knew. At first she hadn’t even recognized her, if it weren’t for the pink hair and skin combined with the blue eyes, she wouldn’t have. Now everything about her felt...off, wrong even. She wasn’t sure if it had anything to do with ponying up or Equestrian magic, but it was obvious that the knife wound didn’t hurt her as much as it should have.

She decided not to press it, it was evident that she wouldn't get anything out of her.

“I’ve...been living with Rainbow Dash for a while. I’m an orphan and have been for a good portion of my life, I lived wherever I could however I could. I try to hide it from other people because I don’t want their pity and I don’t want to be treated differently because of it. But Dash found out about it, and instead of being mad at me like I thought she’d be, she offered to let me stay with her. I agreed, cuz why wouldn’t I agree to living with the awesome Rainbow Dash! And I try to contribute how I can by watching the place while she’s gone, which is why I’m here.”

Other than the bit of excitement when she mentioned Rainbow, Scootaloo’s voice was actually rather dull, with almost no emotion behind it. It was like she was just desensitized to it, maybe because she had to do everything she could to be normal due to her desire to fit in. If so, Scootaloo was tougher than most people thought, Rainbow would be proud.

Pinkamena knew a thing or two about wanting to fit in, she too was now an orphan, though she was sure her circumstances were significantly different. Unless Scootaloo happened to have killed her father and caused her mother to kill herself because of it.

*Fucking shit, am I really this morbid now?*

Pinkamena looked away from her for a moment as she walked over to the closet, where she guessed Scootaloo had come from. She noticed that the door was now completely open, revealing what she had missed before. Scootaloo did her best to turn the closet into her room, while still being able to function as a closet. She used the clothes as both a pillow and a blanket, and there was a backpack in there with what she assumed was everything Scootaloo owned, and that was all she could see.

Pinkamena glanced back at the orange teenager for a moment, noticing that she was watching her in suspicion, which is about what she should expect considering she snuck into here and was healing a stab wound like it was nothing.

“So,” *I’m going to regret asking this since she doesn’t know, but I have to anyway.* “When’s the last time Rainbow was here?”

Thanks to her being so close to Scootaloo, she didn’t have to focus on her hearing to notice the sudden spike in her heartbeat. The questions obviously made her very nervous, her eyes were looking everywhere but at her as she tried to come up with a response.

What Pinkamena couldn’t figure out is why that question made her so anxious.

“Oh...I don’t know, it's been a while. She usually leaves for a while to work odd jobs so she can afford to keep us fed and stuff, sometimes she can even be gone for a day or two. But she usually leaves me enough food and stuff to last me, so it works out. I wish she didn’t have to be out all the time, but you gotta do what you gotta do, right?”

Pinkamena only glared at her in response, which only seemed to make Scootaloo more nervous.

*She’s not lying...more like omitting the truth. Why? Does she know Rainbow’s dead and is trying to hide it from me? Or is it something else?* Pinkamena looked away from Scootaloo and brought her hand up to her face and pinched the bridge of her nose, letting out a frustrated sigh barely loud enough for anyone to hear. *Being alone in those woods was dangerous for a lot of reasons, now that I know how much better it is not having to deal with people, I forgot how difficult they can be.*

Scootaloo looked around the room for a moment, like she was desperate to change the subject to something, anything else. When her eyes got to the workbench, they stayed there for a bit, her eyes squinting like she was trying to read something far off. Then widening as she remembered something, quickly turning her head to look at Pinkamena again.

“I heard you talking to someone earlier, but I didn’t see a phone or anything, what’s up with that?”

Pinkamena opened her eyes, putting her hand back in her pocket as her eyes widened.

*She heard me talking to The Whispers, fan fucking tastic. I need to start being more thorough when I check for heartbeats, if that had been The Silent Killer themselves I might be dead.*

She looked back at Scootaloo, trying to think of something believable to say. Then she noticed The Whispers standing right behind her, leaning down with his head to the left of hers. He was pointing to his ear with his left hand and to Scootaloo with his right, what looked like a small bluetooth earpiece handing out of his ear.

She looked between him and Scootaloo before her mouth opened slightly in a circle as she realized what he was trying to say.

“I...have an earpiece in, I’m just talking to Maud because she gets worried about me sometimes, is all.”

The Whispers straightened their stance and gave her two thumbs up, an unnaturally wide approving smile on their face.

Something about that expression made her...unnerved.

“Oh...that makes sense, I guess? What are you doing in Rainbow’s apartment anyway? Shouldn’t you be at school right now?”

“Shouldn’t you?”

Scootaloo suddenly and very quickly shut her mouth, realizing the hypocrisy in what she said. Pinkamena looked forward and walked to the bed, sitting on it with her hands on the side of the bed and her hair covering the majority of her face.

*Huh, more comfortable than I thought it’d be.*

“I came here because I’m looking for Rainbow Dash, this is the first and only place I could think of to look.”

“Funny,” Scootaloo’s eyes lowered as she frowned, an empty giggle coming out of her mouth. “The last thing we talked about was how much she missed you and was trying to find you.”

She walked over to Pinkamena, dragging her feet the entire way like she didn’t even want to walk. She sat down on the bed beside her, her eyes still on the ground.

“What happened to you, Pinkie? You just...disappeared, everyone thought at first that it had something to do with magic. But then we couldn’t find anything like that, and then everyone was worried you’d gone missing or gotten abducted or something. Everyone, especially Sunset and the others, did everything they could to try to find you. Soon Rainbow lost hope, and I’ve never seen her that...demoralized. Out of all of them I think she tried the hardest, that’s why it was the most painful to see her slowly lose hope. I...I’ve never felt more useless than having to watch her suffer like that!”

Scootaloo ground her teeth in frustration and shame, hiding her face behind what little hair she had. Pinkamena glanced at her, a wave of guilt threatening to overwhelm her knowing she was the cause of this.

*I can’t...even begin to apologize to her, nothing I could possibly say would be able to make up for the past couple of months. If she knew what happened to Rainbow, I think it’d destroy her.*

Pinkamena looked at Scootaloo for a few moments with sullen eyes, her mouth opening and closing as she tried to think of what to say.

“I…” She muttered, “I was taken, completely against my will. They isolated me and I had no way of contacting any of you during that, I would have contacted any of you if I could, I Pinkie Promise you that. It was only recently that I...got away, I went to school and talked to the others, and noticed Rainbow wasn’t there. I got concerned and came here, I wanted to know if she was ok.”

*Well, that’s mostly the truth. There are some things I can’t tell her, but she deserves at least a bit of honesty.*

Scootaloo remained silent for a few moments, her hands gripping the ends of the mattress tightly. Then she relaxed, seeming to have accepted the explanation she was given. Pinkamena could tell her heartbeat was still a bit erratic, and could tell she was even shaking a bit as she tried to hold back her emotions to put on a tough face.

“Is that why you’re so different? You’re basically a completely different person, did whatever they do to you change you to be like this?”

“Yeah, you nailed it. But, I’m still me, I still care about you guys.” She said as she went to put her hand on Scootaloo’s shoulder in an attempt to comfort her, though she wasn’t as good with people as she had been before. Incontinently, Scootaloo suddenly stood up, shrugging Pinkamena’s hand off her shoulder.

“I only heard some of the things you were saying, but....why were you talking about The Silent Killer? I’ve heard that’s some guy or whatever that’s been killing criminals, so why were you talking about them?”

*Oh I am glad she only heard parts of that conversation, specifically not the part where I mentioned that Rainbow was dead,*

Pinkamena thought for a few moments on how to respond, the way she worded things was very important. “Scootaloo, I can’t tell you-”

“Why? Because I’m not an adult like you and Rainbow?” Scootaloo suddenly said, turning around with a scowl on her face. “Rainbow said the same thing every time I asked her where she was going when she left or if I could go with her, she said I wasn’t old enough to understand! She treated me like a kid, and she didn’t start doing that until after you disappeared. I get that she might have been worried after what happened with you, but she knows I hate being treated like a little kid!”

Scootaloo had her hands to her sides clenched, it was obvious to Pinkamena this was something that had been bothering her for a while. She could understand where Scootaloo was coming from, when she was younger she was extremely rambunctious. But despite how childish she acted, she didn’t like being treated like a child. It didn’t really make sense, but it was probably something that stemmed from her loneliness and desire to fit in.

*Ironic, isn’t it? Now, even after spending so much trying to fit in, I couldn’t be more different from everyone else.*

“Scoots, that isn’t why I can’t tell you. It’s…” Pinkamena sighed, beating people up was much simpler than this. “Really complicated. There are some things I just can’t tell anyone, it’d be more dangerous to tell you than you think.”

Scootaloo seemed to calm down at that, or, she at least stopped clenching her fist. “I….” She closed her eyes for a moment as she sharply exhaled, “Just want to be useful. Rainbow Dash has done so much for me, and it hurts that I can’t help her and that all I can do while she’s gone is wait for her to get back. It's really fucking frustrating!”

Pinkamena was about to comment on her use of language, but she stopped herself when she realized how hypocritical that would be of her. “I understand how you feel, I get that way sometimes too.” Pinkamena said as she stood up, looking behind Scootaloo for a moment to see if The Whispers were still around. It didn’t seem they were, having receded back into her mind.

“Right now, you can help Rainbow Dash. I think she might be in danger, which is also why I came looking for her. I just need you to tell me anything you can about her, even if you don’t know where she’s been. Even something as small as how she behaved could help, and then I’ll be out of your hair, Pinkie Promise.”

She relaxed a bit at Pinkamena’s words, crossing her arms as she contemplated how to respond. “Well, I’d be happy to help. But there isn’t very much I can tell you that’ll help, I don’t think at least.”

Scootaloo began to walk around the room as she talked, picking them up and holding them in a pile as she walked around. “She tried looking for you with everyone else, but she got frustrated and argued with them a lot because she didn’t think they were trying very hard. She started going to school less and even started missing soccer practice. I know she cared about you a lot, but after a while she kind of got…” Scootaloo stopped for a moment, her jaw clenching for a moment out of concern. “Obsessive over finding you. It got to a point where it was almost all she talked about, she even stopped talking to Sunset and the others eventually. She stopped going to school and sports at all, she was out looking for you more than she was here, sometimes she’d even come back with bruises and other injuries, I didn’t bother asking because I didn’t think she’d tell me.”

Pinkamena watched as Scootaloo walked over to the closet which was also her room, placing the pile of dirty clothes she had onto the floor. She sat down with her back face to Pinkamena, pulling some clothes from there and adding it to her pile.

“She’d come back with wads of cash and used it on groceries and other stuff, she hasn’t been able to spend time with me, but that’s alright. When she’s gone I do the best I can to keep the place clean, like do the laundry and stuff. But I don’t always have time to go to school, especially without that old geezer noticing me, I’m not supposed to be up here after all.”

Scootaloo stood up, picking up the pile of clothes and putting it in a basket. She pulled a bottle of laundry detergent out of the closet also, putting it in the basket on top of the clothes. She turned to Pinkamena, but was avoiding looking at her, a blank, almost despondent look on her face.

“That’s about all I can tell you, I tried asking where she went off too once or twice, but she usually answered with something vague like ‘looking for Pinkie’, or ‘taking care of you’, so I eventually just stopped asking. She wasn’t going to tell me, so I didn’t want to annoy her.”

“That doesn’t tell me much, but it's more than I came here with, I guess.” Pinkamena said as she stood up, walking towards the door. “Like I said, I’ll leave now, I have other things I need to do today. But you really should try to go back to school, I’m sure Applebloom and Sweetie Belle miss hanging out with you.”

Scootaloo flinched at that, but didn’t say anything else. She remained silent, standing in the center of the room with the basket in her hands. She didn’t say anything until Pinkamena was at the door, when she had the door open and was standing in front of it.

“Pinkie,” Scootaloo said as her voice cracked, “Rainbow really cares about you, more than the others did. She kept trying to look for you even when everyone else stopped, she refused to believe you were dead, I guess she was right. When you do find her, just...talk to her for a while, it would mean a lot to her. You wouldn’t have to explain where you’ve been or anything, I don’t think she even cares about that anymore. She misses you a lot, just talking would be enough to make it all worth it to her.”

Pinkamena could feel her grip tighten on the doorknob, her jaw tightened as she felt a staggering amount of shame. It was her fault that Rainbow was dead, despite the fact that she had no control over it, she couldn’t get rid of the heavy guilt that came with it.

She stood there for a few moments with the door open, unable to think of what to say. So she said nothing at all, there was nothing she could say. She shut the door after stepping through, she couldn’t stand being in that room anymore, it hurt too much.

_____

“So, what am I doing here again?”

Pinkamena was in the more suburban part of Manhattan, away from the busy city full of apartments and business buildings. It was a bit of a pain to get here without a car, but she also didn’t feel like going back to her house and getting the car, or driving at all. She never really liked driving that much, it made her feel constricted. Sitting in a giant metal box just hoping something doesn’t mess up or that somebody else doesn’t mess up, was just not something someone as paranoid as her could get used to.

Though freerunning wasn’t exactly risk free, there was more...liberty in it. She could always slip up and fall, but at least she had the freedom to move around the way she wanted to. However, as risky as freerunning was, with her peculiar situation, she was a lot more likely to die in an automobile accident than falling off a building.

“I told you already, and you know I hate repeating myself, so this is the last time I’ll say it. You owe me a favor for that whole thing with Applejack, and right now, that entails sitting on this building and watching the house across from us. And, like I said before, you will know what it is you’re looking for when you see it. Just be patient, it's only a little past three, you’ve still got plenty of daylight to burn. Besides, TSK doesn’t usually do anything until the sun has been down for awhile. You have to also consider how things went last time. They don’t have the healing factor that you do, and considering they tussled with you and Juno, I’d be surprised they were even alive if it weren’t for the fact he was prioritizing getting you out of there. It’s pretty damn likely TSK is taking their time licking their wounds and isn’t even going to do anything tonight, so untwist your panties and sit still like a good little girl.”

She had to bite her tongue to prevent herself from saying something that would just piss them off. “I’d like to ask what the point of this is and how this benefits you at all, but I’m sure you’d find to make your answer as vague as possible, assuming you even gave me one.”

He only scoffed at that, a smug smirk on his face.

Pinkamena was sitting on a house in a line of other houses, sitting at the edge with her feet dangling off the end. The Whispers were standing behind her, watching her with their hands in their pockets. After giving the keys back to that landlord and leaving the apartment, The Whispers showed up and told her they were cashing in that favor. She decided to not even bother trying to resist them and just hoped it wasn’t something too bad, they basically told her to go to this place and watch this house, she’d know what she was looking for when it showed up.

She had been sitting there for an hour or so, waiting for whatever it was they wanted her to see. It had actually taken her a bit to get here, it was a lot more out of the way than she expected it to be, not to mention she had taken more time in that apartment than she thought she did. Surprisingly, other than the couple of cars driving through since school was letting out, it was actually quite peaceful around here. She didn’t know how much she had gotten used to the commotion of city life until she was away from it, now the only noise here was the sound of random animals and occasionally the idle conversation of people who were in their houses, which the one she was sitting on didn’t happen to have any.

During that time of waiting, she couldn’t help but let her thoughts drift around, it had been a bit since she could just think without having to dread any immediate danger. She thought a bit about Applejack, who despite the fact that they tried to kill each other, were now friends like before, as if nothing had changed. Sunset, who was trying so hard to fix everything even though she couldn’t. She couldn’t even imagine how she had made the rest feel pushing them away like that, but there wasn’t much other choice. She was still processing what happened with Maud and their mom, she couldn’t even imagine what would have happened if Maud had died there.

Strangely enough, she thought about Starlight.

Starlight was the person who’s had the biggest hand in trying to help her, other than Discord anyway. But the way Starlight treated her was so...different, she treated her like a person, unlike anyone else in The Syndicate. Her therapy session with her might have unveiled some unpleasant things, but it helped her sort out some things. Sort of, the best way she could think of to explain is her mind was a distant image she couldn’t see, and Starlight helped bring that image into focus.

Also, Starlight was genuinely enjoyable to talk to. It might have been because of her knowledge in psychology, but she did seem to have a way with people, enough to be dangerous if she really wanted to be. But as far as she could tell, Starlight only had good intentions, and was genuinely trying to help her.

She was one of the few people Pinkamena could talk to about everything and trust, and right now talking to her would have made her day a lot better.

Her eyes glanced to the left as she noticed a car begin to pull into the driveway of the house she was supposed to be watching, a small black van that seemed it would just barely be able to fit four people. They left the car in the driveway and turned the car off, stepping out of the car and beginning to walk towards the house.

He looked like a completely ordinary man, someone that didn’t stick out in any way. Though he was an older man, having short, bright gray hair that was barely bigger than a buzz cut and multiple wrinkles. The only abnormality being a noticeable scar on the left side of his face, a deep gash resembling a battle wound. But he didn’t seem like a veteran of any kind, in fact he had a very skinny body, even the black t-shirt and blue jeans seem to just hang off of him. He was wearing a pair of sandals that didn’t make any noise when he walked, probably because there was barely any weight behind his steps.

At first, she didn’t feel anything, other than a bit of confusion at what she was looking at. There didn’t seem to be anything about him that was special, and it certainly wasn’t someone she recognized. But when she was able to see him, she felt a stabbing pain in her heart, but it felt like it came from inside her. The intense pain spread from her heart to the rest of her body, a deep sinking feeling that felt heavy enough to drag her down.

She brought her hand to her chest, gripping it tightly as the pain only seemed to get worse by the second. Her vision began to get blurry as she felt water in her eyes, warm tears began to roll down her face. She tried her best hold back a sob, her breathing was becoming more erratic the harder she tried.

She felt herself slowly become overwhelmed with a plethora of emotions, her brain was going into overdrive and full meltdown, she hadn’t even felt her teeth bite into her tongue or her nails digging almost deep enough into her hands to reach bone, and she didn’t even know why!

“I-i...can’t...why?”

“What’s wrong? A little overwrought?” The Whispers asked mockingly, walking forward and crouching down beside her, turning his gaze from her to the man across the street. “This will help you out with good old Fancy Pants, but he’s the reason Igneous took out that money for him. He needed to fake his death, for circumstances that aren’t really important, just know it needed to happen. His name isn’t important either, it's not anyone you’d know or are supposed to know. All I’ll disclose is that before Igneous had his big identity crisis, that guy was one of his closest friends, his emotional crutch in a lot of ways. In fact, it probably contributed to how things turned out.”

“Then...why do I-” Pinkamena tried to say as she choked on a sob.

“Why do you feel such a mixture of emotions? Well, on top of the fact that a lot of The Whispers are having feelings of anger, sadness, and a variety of other emotions, Igneous didn’t actually know that his death was faked. Bit complicated, I’ll water it down for you. Big problem happened in The Syndicate, this guy was at the center of it all. Igneous was desperate for things to work out and to save his friend, so he asked Discord if he knew how to make it all go away, that was his first mistake. Discord said he could, but he needed enough money to make it happen. This guy showed up ‘dead’, or at least a guy that looked enough like him to pass. To make sure there was no way of anyone finding out he wasn’t exactly six feet deep, Discord made sure not even Igneous knew. Imagine how you’d feel if you thought your best friend was dead, just to realize later they were actually alive and more or less fine, I’m sure you’d feel a cornucopia of emotions.”

As he finished talking, the man across the street entered his home, none the wiser to what was happening. Her feelings were a bit less intense, but they were still almost unbearable. She tried to stand up and turn around, but her legs felt like jelly and it was difficult to walk. She felt herself fall to her knees and then keel over, her head slamming against the roof of the house, hot tears streaming down her face as she struggled just to think.

“M-make it….stop.” She begged, knowing they wouldn’t have heard if they weren’t The Whispers.

If possible, his smile seemed to get more smug and wider when he heard her. He leaned down and cupped his hand around his ear, like he was trying to hear better.

“What’s that? Make it stop? I thought you said you wanted me to let you deal with it? Could it be the strong and tough Pi-”

“PLEASE!” She bellowed, her face soaked in tears as she desperately tried to stop crying. She was sure her scream was heard by the people who were living in the houses around her, but right now she didn’t care. She just needed it to stop!

He gave a chuckle as he lowered his hand and stood straight, snapping his fingers. “That didn’t last very long.”

She felt the familiar coldness and numb feeling inside her, starting in what felt like the center of her heart and quickly spreading. The emotions she felt began to dull and eventually were overshadowed with that deep chill, until she felt completely hollow. Her face was still wet but there were no more tears, and she was quickly getting her breathing under control.

“How...do you know all of this if even Igneous didn’t know? I don’t get it.” Pinkamena asked as she began to stand up, using the sleeve of her hoodie to wipe the tears off her face.

“Yeah, the situation with Igneous is a bit complicated. I’ll clarify: Discord is probably aware of this, he is terrifyingly perceptive and cautious. We have access to all of Igneous’ memories from before we were put in, after we...dissipated seems to be the appropriate term, we have no idea what went on. That was a good few years, a lot could have happened. But as for how we know about this whole thing, there was a pretty significant period of time where Discord was ‘experimenting’ with us, to put it simply. He was testing ways to keep us contained without causing the people around us to have a strong desire to put us inside them, a side effect of us being in our natural state. What he wasn’t aware of, and what I assure you you will suffer if you try to let him know in any way, is that we could see and hear everything while in there.”

He said as he walked to the edge of the roof, staring off into the distance as he spoke. “It's probably not surprising, but Discord talks to himself a lot when he thinks he’s alone, usually it's whatever he’s planning. He’s quite paranoid, he never made a plan without several contingencies. We heard about that whole situation and that’s how we know about it. But now we don’t care. So you can tell members of The Council that he’s alive if you like, doesn’t make a difference anyway.”

Pinkamena felt a tinge of what felt like anger, but it wasn’t hers and it was still significantly dulled. She turned around and walked to the edge beside them, putting her hands in her pockets with a blank look on her face.

“I’m sure there’s plenty of secrets like this you learned then, but I doubt you’d tell me any if I asked, until it’s convenient anyway. So, instead I’ll just ask how this benefits you? I don’t get how this was a favor to you, and I don’t feel like thinking about it for the next couple of days, so please just tell me.” She said hesitantly, she wouldn’t really be surprised if he did.

“You mean other than to spite both you and Igneous at the same time?” He asked rhetorically, glancing back at her for a moment before looking forward again, humming thoughtfully as he pretended to think. “A lot of reasons, I guess. But mainly to prove a point, and that I’m right. We can’t push off giving you full access for much longer, few days at most. You think the process is so easy and that you can handle it because you’re so tough, and that it’ll be different with you because you’re so special. But now, hopefully at least, you know better. No matter how much you might hate me or Alice, you need us as much as we need you. If you die, we go right back to being isolated until who knows when. So stop being so fucking stubborn and ask for help when you obviously need it, It is actually baffling to me how similar you and Igneous a-”

“If I hear one more fucking person compare me to him, I’m going to throw up!” Pinkamena shrieked, a deep scowl on her face as she glared at him.

He stayed silent for a few moments, staring at her with his eyebrows raised curiously for a few moments. Then he scoffed, a complacent smirk on his face. “Igneous didn’t like being compared to others e-”

He was interrupted when Pinkamena tried to punch him, only for her fist to go through him. Like a shadow he vanished, slight traces of black mist whenever they did. She stayed in that position for a few moments, before letting herself relax as her arm fell to her side and she was panting angrily. She turned to the edge, flopping down on it with her legs dangling off the edge again.

She brought her hands up to her face and moved all her hair behind her hairs, closing her eyes and breathing in and out a couple of times. With a final deep inhale and exhale, she opened her eyes and set her left hand on her leg. She moved her right hand into her hoodie pocket, pulling out the pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She opened it to see there were only two left, she would have to get more later. She pulled one out of the box and set it to the side, putting it in her mouth and lighting it with relative ease. She put the lighter in her pocket and pulled the cigarette out of her mouth with her other hand, a puff of smoke coming from her mouth as she gave out a relieved sigh.

“I miss she demon Sunset, or The Sirens, or even Midnight Sparkle. Those might have been global or even dimensional threats, but somehow they felt like they were easier to deal with, and at least then I had my friends.”

She said to herself, trying to relax as she attempted to process everything she just learned. Not to mention she needed to figure out how to deal with Sunset and the others, even if AJ convinced her to not confront her about it, that wouldn’t be the end of it. She knew Sunset, she wasn’t going to give up and this wasn’t going to be the last of it. She also felt the need to help Scootaloo, since without help she would undoubtedly be forced to live on the streets and do atrocious things to survive, it was her fault she was going to end up like that after all.

*I really need to just..vent, I don’t really care how at this point. I really want to hit something, but talking would probably be better.*

She held the cigarette between her fingers and brought it down to the back back of her hand, pushing it against the back of her hand and burning herself, hearing a slight singing sound as the skin burned and bits of ash were on it. Smoke and steam coming off of the spot as the flesh got burned and almost as quickly began to heal, the burning hurt, but she needed to feel something other than the overwhelming numbness that came with the cold, even if that defeated the entire purpose of it.

She brought the cigarette up to her mouth and briefly smoked it, wiping some of the ash off her hand and then reaching into her hoodie pocket, pulling out her phone and turning it on. She grimaced a bit at the picture of her with her friends, feeling a sense of longing. But she shook her head, putting in her password to get what she was wanting.

She couldn’t talk to Applejack, even if she was available now, there were a lot of things she couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to talk to her about. The others were obviously out of the question. She loved Maud, but she didn’t want to burden her anymore than she already was,

And Discord...was Discord, enough said.

She saw that Discord had sent her his emergency number, along with a text from Sunset saying that they ‘needed to talk’, she was going to choose to ignore it and hope a certain orange farmer would handle that. She began to dial the number Discord gave, bringing the phone to her ear as it rang. She would have just called the number she called him with earlier, but for some reason it didn’t even show that he called her. And when she tried to call the number of the contact she messaged her with, it didn’t even ring.

She decided not to question it.

“This isn’t exactly an emergency, but he’s the only one I can ask. Hope he doesn’t get too pissed, I haven’t seen him actually pissed off and I don’t think I want to.”

The phone ringed for a few more seconds, before there was a clicking noise as Discord picked up.

“Pinkie, this is my emergency phone number that you should only be calling for emergencies. So either you got your ass kicked not even twenty four hours after I told you to be careful, or you’re calling me for something that isn’t an emergency.”

“...I need a favor, can you give me Starlight’s number?”

She felt very tense for those few moments of silence, before flinching when he chuckled, though it was hard to tell exactly why he was. “Luckily for you, I’m in a pretty good mood, more so than usually I mean. Alright, I’ll consider this an emergency of love, then.”

“I don’t love Starlight! I don’t know what gave you that idea, I can count the times we’ve talked on one hand!” She shouted with a bit of a blush on her face, Discord didn’t seem the type to care about the romance of others, she needed to learn not to be surprised when it came to Discord.

“Not yet, you mean. Right now it's just a crush, but it’ll get there. I’m just saying, it wouldn’t surprise me if she swore off men after what happened with Michael, I know she’s experimented with other girls, she seemed to go through that phase for a bit longer than most.”

Pinkamena opened her mouth to respond, before closing both her eyes and mouth, realizing it would have just been pointless. She inhaled from the cigarette and let out a sigh. “Just...give me the number, you old perv.”

With nothing more than another chuckle, he hung up. She heard a ding from the phone, bringing it forward to see that he had messaged her the number. She quickly named it as Starlight and began to call the number, she put it against her ear but the ringing did not last long before it clicked.

“This is Starlight Glimmer, may I ask who’s calling?”

She had half expected Starlight to not be available, so she couldn’t help but smile when she picked up.

“It’s Pinkamena, you have time to talk?”

_____

Her talk with Starlight had been...enlightening, and comforting in a lot of ways.

She still felt a bit overwhelmed with everything, but it made things easier that she had people to rely on. And at least she had two people she could talk to about any of her problems, but she would likely prefer talking to Starlight the majority of the time. She didn’t like whatever weird relationship she had with Igneous, but it at least meant that she had a much better idea of how to help her than almost anyone.

She had spent a good amount of time talking to Starlight, but luckily she had come back to the city while she was talking with her, which took her roughly two hours. Her current plan for the rest of the day was to do what she could to track down The Silent Killer, which amounted to going back to the building they fought on last time, looking for any left over blood of theirs and trying to use it to track them down.

It might not end up mattering at all, but there wasn’t much else she had to go on. Before she could go there, she needed to make a pitstop. She smoked the last of her cigarettes during her talk with her, and since they provided the very few moments of any kind of peace she got throughout her day, it was something she was willing to go out of her way to get.

She wasn’t in any particular rush either, she had gotten almost everything she wanted to get done. The Whispers brought up a valid point, TSK has never been active during the day before, for whatever reason. The best thing she could do was learn what she can about them and hopefully figure out a way to draw them out, if not, prowl around the streets and hope to find them.

Currently, she was buying a pack of Morley cigarettes, a bit curious about what Juno was doing. He was watching her surely, she had no doubts about that. But she wasn’t sure if he was telling The Council everything she did and everywhere she went, but it was safe to assume he was. That would mean they would become aware that she was investigating Rainbow’s disappearance, and that she had visited a member of The Syndicate that was supposed to be dead, there would be backlash for that if it were so.

But that was then, this was now, and now was more pressing.

She had learned to more or less just turn off her senses while she was travelling, she needed to not think at times or she’d explode. Her senses were also rather dulled during these times and she wasn’t entirely aware of her surroundings, something that she admitted was just asking for trouble, she’d need to stop doing that in the future.

She was handing the money to the cashier and putting the pack in her hoodie pocket, when she heard the sound of glass breaking. If it hadn’t been for her fast reflexes, the bullet that shot through the window would have gone straight into her head and it would have been game over. Instead, she dashed backwards as it grazed across her cheek leaving a deep gash until it hit the wall. The cashier ducked behind the counter at the sound of the glass breaking, looking up over it fearfully as they tried to see what was going on.

*I didn’t even hear a gunshot, where did that come from?*

Pinkamena ran outside of the convenience store, steaming coming off of her face as the wound began to quickly heal. She looked around, trying to find the source of the bullet as she sniffed the air.

*I can’t smell any gunpowder, which means either the shooter is far, or…*

Pinkamena looked up at the rooftops, her eyes widening as she saw who she was looking for. The Silent Killer was on the rooftop of the building across from her, in broad daylight like they had no fear of being caught. They were lying prone on the rooftop, in their full black suit with that same sniper aimed down at her. They didn’t seem injured in any way she could see, but that meant they had to be hindered by them in some way, they didn’t have the healing factor she did after all.

She could see the sunlight glare of the scope of their sniper rifle, pulling back the bolt as they prepared to shoot her again.