Deadly Days of a Graceful Killer
The day starts off like any other. Hitting the top of her alarm clock to cull it's shrill cry, Rarity sits up in bed with a yawn and a stretch. After a long night of her private occupation's work, it felt good to be so well-rested as she slipped out of bed, resting both feet on her blue-carpeted floor. She went over to her closet, deliberating on the apparel before eventually picking out a blue sundress, then made a beeline to the bathroom to get ready for the day. After a quick shower, followed by getting dressed, brushing her hair, and putting on some lipstick and eyeshadow, she headed downstairs to a quick breakfast and her chatty sister Sweetie Belle. Once it was time to leave, she opened the door for Sweetie Belle, and the two sisters walked to Canterlot High together.
"So, did ya watch the news this morning?" the two heard as they made it into Canterlot High's courtyard. Usually quiet, lately the campus was bustling more and more with the sound of ever-growing chatter amongst the student body. It was rare for the school to be so excited, or at least pent up with the events of the proceeding or future days. In this case, however, the subject was rather macabre.
The other student, a woman with neon red hair, nodded quickly. Her hands tightened around her bag's strap nervously, as though her next few words would put her on the list. "Another murder, j-just last night..." she hesitantly replied.
"I find it absolutely despicable!" a male student with green hair responded, sitting on the step beside his red-haired girlfriend as Rarity and Sweetie Belle walked up the steps. "I-I mean, someone's killin' folks out there without a care in the world, and no one knows why!"
"I hope I'm not next," the first speaker, their azure haired friend responded. The trio gave a resounding nod as Rarity and Sweetie Belle made it inside the school.
The rest of the student body wasn't much better, whispers and loud gossip about the kill permeating the whole hall. It was as though the smell of blood inside of a sleepy town like Canterlot set off sharks, except instead of wanting more death, it merely drove them away. Sweetie Belle gulped and took a deep breath in at this commotion, which Rarity picked up on quickly. "What's wrong, darling?" Rarity asked softly, escorting her to her classroom by the hand.
"I-It's, um," Sweetie Belle nervously responded, walking quickly with her sister. She sighed and looked up, admitting "It's this death...and the one before that, and the one before that! I-I mean, things used to be safe and quiet, but then Sunset Shimmer showed up...at least no one died there. Are we even safe?"
Rarity paused, but quickly pulled together a smile. "Oh, Sweetie Belle," Rarity said gently. "Of course we're safe! No sane individual would dare to lay a finger on a child, or someone like me, for that matter."
"...What if they're not sane?" Sweetie Belle rightfully pointed out, crooking an eyebrow at her sister.
Rarity fumbled over her next bit of reassurance, stammering "W-Well, I mean, I assumed-" before stopping and clearing her throat. She started again, responding "If they're not sane, then they'll be caught eventually because they're not...comment dites-vous...capable of rationally hiding!"
Sweetie Belle blinked twice before, again, rightfully pointing out "But they haven't gotten caught yet."
Rarity breathed in deeply, and after a second of thought, said "Well, he will be! Eventually." She hoped Sweetie Belle didn't hear the whisper of "Hopefully not anytime soon," under her breath as they got to the classroom.
Sweetie Belle, luckily, did not hear a word of the whisper, but only because her mind was preoccupied with one last question just before class. "But, wait," she asks, "what if they aren't a guy? I mean, I find it wrong to just assume, right?"
"Then you're old enough to recognize that being male is not a sign of aggression," Rarity pointed out to her Junior High-school aged sister, before letting go and hurrying off with a wave. "Ta-ta!~"
A while later, after classes had ended and the teachers had left to grade papers (or as most of the student body assumed, have a quick fix of Scotch and try to pretend they have control over their lives and income), Rarity went down to the cafeteria to meet up with her friends under more talkative circumstances. And, of course, eat lunch.
As she walked in, though, the fact that the student body could speak had opened the floodgates for spreading more word of the murder from last night, as well as the ones before. Paranoia started to sweep the area as no one quite knew what would happen next with the case. Rarity sighed, all the constant chatter sounding like a broken record stuck in her head as she went to her friends' table to find them all sitting there, joining in on the commotion.
"Look, all I'm saying is, the circumstances are so strange to me," Twilight responded, popping another french fry in her mouth mid-pause. "A few months to a year of very little in terms of notable incidents save for isolated magical events spaced out through it, then back-to-back murder four nights in a row? This doesn't seem...random." Rarity nodded as she sit down next to Applejack, who gave a slight wave and a smile as Rarity sat down.
Even that slight wave and smile was enough to make her heart skip a beat, though. Rarity smiled softly back, but tensed up in her seat as she looked over to Applejack out of the corner of her eye. Beautiful eyes the color of emeralds that glowed like the gem itself, a soft smile that could make anyone weak in the knees, a toned physique everywhere you looked and-
"-ity?" someone called, pulling Rarity out of her lovey-dovey daydream.
She looked back and shook the thoughts from her head, asking "Yes?" and blinking twice.
It was Sunset Shimmer, sitting on a chair pulled over from another table, as was customary for her. She was looking to Rarity expectingly as she explained "Twi asked you a question." Rarity responded with a sheepish look of non-verbal apology as she looked back over to Twilight.
Twilight, for her part, just repeated "What do you make of all this, Rarity?"
A quick answer was her response, sitting up straighter and looking Twilight in the eye calmly. "I find it utterly reprehensible. Ending lives, spooking the townsfolk. Sweetie Belle asked me, point blank, if we were safe! What a disgrace of the human race, that monster truly is!"
The rest of the table showed their agreement and affirmations by nodding and responding that she was right. All except for one, merely deep in thought. "Well, what bothers me is that no one knows why this rat bastard's doin' it," Rainbow Dash points out from Applejack's left, two seats down from Rarity. "Are they a sadist who gets off on this stuff? Hell of some sexual frustration, really."
"Rainbow Dash," Sunset responds, "I will pay you actual money to never associate the word "murder" with "sexual frustration" ever again."
Pinkie Pie raises her head up from sucking up her milk in her straw (but not actually consuming it, as such) to point out "But it's a valid reason! Sickos gettin' their jollies hurting and killing people. It's like those true crime shows Fluttershy secretly likes."
Everyone slowly turned to look at Fluttershy, who was in the corner opposite Rainbow Dash and was trying desperately to merge into the corner. "Please stop staring at me," she requests in as soft a voice as ever, "it's a guilty pleasure."
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes and got back to the point. "Or maybe it's a hitman! All of the victims were pretty important dudes, right?" she posits, ignoring a side-eye from Rarity as she offered a theory.
Twilight shook her head. "Unlikely. A hitman in a place like Canterlot wouldn't be impossible, but it would be unlikely," she replies, explaining her disagreement as such. "While the victims were "pretty important dudes," a quick online search turns up anonymous accusations on most of them. Extorting smaller businesses, sexual misconduct-"
"Ah," Sunset interrupted, warningly.
"Fine, fine," Twilight acquiesces. "Just...there is also the possibility that this is a vigilante of some kind. Someone who took justice into their own hands to rid the world of society's monsters."
"Does that make it right, though?" Applejack asks. "Ah mean, honestly, bad people need to get their just desserts, but is death really the way to go?"
Rarity let them speak their moral dilemmas as she ate in silence, hearing every interpretation of the argument. She paid it mind, and responded at certain points, but mostly it was the silence of just eating her lunch and getting the energy for the rest of the day.
It was hours later that she needed to leave. 1:23 AM shined brightly in crimson letters on her alarm clock, but she paid it no mind. Pulling out a note from her drawer, Rarity looked over it, taking in the details fully. "Alley left of Lance's Bass and Fishing Supplies, Quartz Street. Come after 1:20." Short and succinct as always.
Tip-toeing out and making sure Sweetie Belle was really asleep, Rarity crept out of the house under the cover of night. Always checking over her shoulder, always ready for someone to jump out at a seemingly defenseless young woman. Luckily, it was a nice part of town, and no one seemed to even be watching, if anyone was even out.
With the walk to Quartz Street being rather uneventful, Rarity breathes easy as she spots the duffle bag. A Dead Drop. Common among the group she found herself in. She unzips the duffle bag to find a few items of note. A folder, a tuxedo, gloves, a burner phone, and underneath it all, a silenced pistol. .22 Subsonic, as customary. Rarity double-checked to make sure no one was looking, and began to change clothes.
Once she was decked out, and her real outfit stuck in the duffle bag, she looked over the folder as she dialed the one number that would answer the burner phone and held it up to her ear. "Hello?" she asked quietly, looking over the dossier.
"Sapphire," said the man on the other end, his voice deep, but smooth as always. "Just the woman I wanted to hear from."
"Afraid I'd be an interloper, Janus?" Rarity asked, memorizing every word. "I have told you that an alley is no place for private property, haven't I?"
"Janus", the man on the other end, chuckled softly before responding "You have, you have. And so have other...agents. We've been planning on moving the Dead Drops to more secure locations. Rooftops and shit. Hopefully, you don't mind a little bit of climbing."
Rarity chuckled back. "I've needed to work out, recently," she jokes, before finally addressing the subject of her career. "So, Breezing Toke, hmm?"
"Yep," Janus replied on the other end. "Drug-Pusher. Literally, pushing his product on kids and the like. You know we like to keep clients anonymous, but I'm thinking one of the kids he fucked with had a rich dad eager to get his hands dirty."
The corner of Rarity's lips quirked. "Je vois, and you sent one who deserved it to me automatically? I knew I could make an impression."
"More like I had enough of the whining shit from my ex," Janus responds. "He's usually in a junkyard in his failing rock band. They leave him all alone to light up after their late night sets, from around 1:30 to 2:15 on average."
"How do you know that?" Rarity responded.
Janus didn't answer back immediately, but when he did, it was with a mysterious "I have ways, Sapphire. Now, do as you must. I'll wire-tap the money after it's done." And then with a click, the line went dead, as did the burner phone.
Her handler was right: it was a failing rock band. As soon as Rarity slipped into the junkyard just in time to get ready, she could hear the awful symphony unfold in front of her. Untuned guitars making sharp wails that scraped her ears, drums banged into without rhyme or reason, and the vocal performance of someone who's voice cracked more than a pre-pubuscent boy. And yet, still better than how the Dazzlings sounded after their necklaces broke.
Rarity wasn't sure where the backhanded compliment started and where the outward insult stopped.
Mercifully, she got there at the end of their "set". With one last crash of the drums, the other band-members petered out, leaving a green-haired, brown-eyed man on guitar behind. He waved, and she could hear him say "Catch y'all later. I've got stuff to do." He immediately pulled out a rolled up joint and a lighter, and as the last of his bandmates left, it was finally her time to strike.
Creeping up from behind the garbage, Rarity cautiously got behind the intoxicated man and pulled her suppressed .22 pistol. Pointing the gun at the back of his head, standing far enough back that he couldn't feel the barrel with his skull. He wouldn't have to see it coming. With one last thought of him pushing on Sweetie Belle to fuel the jitters she still had on her fifth contract, Rarity breathed in deeply, and fired.
With a soft cracking bang, though louder than in the movies, blood splattered against the ground as Breezing Toke flopped down face-first. It was done. Rarity then obsessively checked over herself and her surroundings. A shell-casing, and footprints. Good. Minor things.
She got to work, using the gloves and whatever she had on hand to clear the evidence. Obfuscating the footprints by tampering with them, picking up the shell casing and tossing it into the trash. The murder would be discovered eventually. Best to get that part over with, and leave no trace of herself behind. That, and it was just rather uncouth to make a mess, no matter where you were.
Once she was done, she got out of dodge, swiftly returning to the dead drop and replacing everything she took from it before zipping it shut. Just in time, a Live Drop in a mask and a similar tux to the one she wore just seconds prior came in and looked over her. "Silent whispers call you," he starts.
"And a cold chill shall end the rest," Rarity responds back. The Live Drop nods and passes her a new burner phone before taking the duffle bag and walking off.
She dialed in, and immediately heard "Good job, Sapphire. Caught it on my cameras." Rarity was about to ask, before Janus just said "You'll never find them. $1,000 is in your bank account. Cheap hit, I know, but this guy wasn't a conglomerate like the last one. 'Til next time. I'll be at the beginning and end of the hit, as always."
"Ta-ta, Janus," Rarity responded, hanging up the burner phone and tossing it away. With that done, it was time for her to go home.
Even if there wasn't a hit tomorrow, the cycle of the rest of her day would repeat. Such is the life she now has for herself, full of treachery. But so long as she could support her sister and herself while also ridding the world of those who'd seek to make life hard for those who don't deserve it, she didn't see herself leaving anytime soon.
Author's Note
Welcome to my new story! Deadly Days is a part drama, part black comedy about Rarity being a hitwoman. I had this idea a while back, and I felt like giving the concept a shot.
So, after my last blog post, I need to clear up that, again, Stand for Equestria is not on hiatus, nor cancelled. I'm merely taking a break to try something new so I can get my motivation back. Anyone reading this story who's a fan of that story: I don't know how long you'll need to be patient for, but Shooting Star's journey will continue.
Anywho, I hope this was alright. I know the tone can be a bit jumpy. I wanted to advertise this as just pure black comedy, but the more I built the story in my head, the more elements of actual character stuff and dramatic scenarios built up. So, I made changes to be more of a dramedy. And I'm a little afraid that the tone will give whiplash because of it.
Hopefully this wasn't just stable, but interesting and good enough to hold your interest. 'Til next time! :)