AND FROM THAT DAY FORWARD ANYTIME A BUNCH OF PLANTS ARE TOGETHER IN ONE PLACE IT'S CALLED A GREENHOUSE!
Fire red—like the scorching lustre of her billowing hair.
Vibrant gold—like the elegant shimmer she brought into the room.
Earthen brown—like the hue of her messenger bag: rich yet modest.
Dappled flecks of white—like the shine of her teeth when she smiled.
And even the stem—when shone under blue light—resembled the turquoise of her beautiful, glistening eyes.
Of all the flowers Wallflower Blush grew in her garden, Tagetes patula—French merigold—was by far her absolute favorite. For during those long, lonesome afternoons spent out back behind the campus grounds of Canterlot High, tending to those delicate blooming buds gave the shy girl's eyes plenty of colors to fill the void with.
But—blissfully—not for long.
“Wally...?” That warm, womany voice ran along velvet aromas of floral euphoria. “Where do you want me to put these azaleas?”
Wallflower looked up from where she was watering an array of fiery flower buds. Her soil-brown eyes glossed over the moment they reflected Sunset Shimmer's hourglass visage, sashaying out of the tool shed and across the springy verdant glen that marked the space between the fringes of the cozy little garden. Her lips parted with a soft breath, wanting to profess her adoration ten times over... wanting to propose... wanting to leap up from where she was squatting and tackle Sunset with an endless barrage of dew-soft-laden kisses.
She chose to calmly answer her girlfriend instead: “Over there by the oak tree.” She motioned with a hand spade. “There should be some soft soil ready for planting.”
Sunset Shimmer cradled the potted azaleas to her ample bosom, regarding the space in question with a curious blink. “Won't they be choked of sunlight there?”
“Eh... azaleas are tough enough to handle a bit of shade.” The edge of Wallflower's lips curled up into something most would call a “smile.” It was very unbecoming of the teenage girl. Then again, so were a lot of things. “Reminds me of somebody I know,” she said.
“Heh. You're the flower expert, not me,” Sunset said, shuffling over with a garden shovel of her own. “Back where I'm from, we treat flowers like midnight snacks.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Mmmhmmm.” Sunset's lips tightened as she struggled with a few errant grass roots while making room for the azaleas to be planted. She squatted low... attempting to imitate her significant other's grace in such poise but failing—in a charming way. “In Equestria, flowers are basically microwave tv dinners... without microwaves.”
“Heh...” Wallflower stood up from her task, not bothering to brush the flecks of dirt from her baggy cargo pants or striped sweatervest. “I guess it's strangely comforting to know that tending to plants is just as lonesome a hobby over there as it is here.”
“I wouldn't call it 'lonesome,'” Sunset Shimmer said, planting one azalea after another beside the oak tree. She smiled into a brisk spring wind that rippled over the lush garden. “It's just... quiet.”
“Days spent gardening is very dull,” Wallflower droned with a slight roll of her eyes. “There's no need to pretend otherwise—”
“Who's pretending?” Sunset's voice rolled back. The warmth in her words matched her cheeks, setting the shady spot aflame with sincerity. “It's calm. It's soothing. It's meditative. Besides... it's what you've always loved to do your whole life... and how can something that you love to do possibly be boring to me?”
Within seconds, Wallflower had slumped down, wrapping her arms around her girlfriend's supple figure. She leaned in—a very bold thing—if only to do something bolder. “Muuuuah...” A long kiss to the back of the neck, followed by a kitten-like nuzzle to Sunset's ear, and then she purred: “Nothing I enjoy in life is dull or lonesome anymore... thanks to you.”
Sunset took a few giggling breaths to come up from that deluge of mush. “You wouldn't be this snuggly with me if you saw and smelled what I look like on the other side of the mirror.”
To that, Wallflower merely blinked. “Betch, I was raised on a DVD of Spirited Away. Freud and I had prepared well in advance for you.”
Wallflower turned to face her with a smile and a sigh. The two leaned in and rubbed noses like lesbian dorks until she trilled through grinning teeth: “Speaking of which... I got the most perfect gift for you.”
Wallflower arched an eyebrow, hugging Sunset tighter. “You know it's not my birthday for another few months.”
“It's a special occasion every day that you're alive, ya friggin' goofus.” Sunset nudged her in the shoulder before standing up. A very sad Wallflower let her part ways—if only to watch her walk towards the shed. “I brought it with me in my purse! I didn't want you to see until after school was over!”
“Why?” Wallflower asked, repositioning herself on the grass so that she resembled a Bond girl resting atop an invisible piano. Spending the last few months paired up with Sunset had grown her a spine, among other things, and she looked forward to each and every new way she could surprise the former Fall Formal Princess with how many ways she could break her past coquettish mold. “Is it NSFPW?”
“NSFPW?” Sunset Shimmer's voice echoed as she entered the shed. “What's that—?”
“Not Safe For Principal Woona!”
Laughter rippled across the garden. “If you're gonna boldly acronym, at least make it worth my ears!”
“Well, if they were fuzzier and longer then I wouldn't have to work so hard!” Wallflower smiled. Silence. “Get it?” She blinked. More silence. “Horse joke!” Crickets. “Cuz horse girl?”
All that returned was a loud and resounding: “Starswirl on a bike!”
Just like that, Wallflower Blush's blood ran cold, turning her pale green face even paler. When her flawless and beautiful beloved pronounced Equestrian exclamations, that could only mean things had gotten more serious than burnt placentas. She breathlessly leapt to her feet and jogged into the shed. Once there—haloed by dangling tools and seedling bags—she approached a very frazzled and panicking Sunset.
“What's the matter?!” Wallflower gnashed her teeth. Starting to tremble. “What's wrong? Is it Equestrian magic?”
“Worse!” Sunset Shimmer spun, hyperventilating. Her forearms lifted instinctively up, wrists dangling like a limp donkey's. She looked like she was experiencing a waking nightmare—a night terror for horses—and Wallflower wanted to cuddle her instantly. Instead, she listened as Sunset sputtered: “My purse! It's gone!”
“Your purse is gone?!”
“My cellphone! My textbooks! Princess Twilight's journal—Oh Wally!—Your gift!” She sniffled, eyes watering. “I can't believe you misplaced it!”
“I can't either...” Wallflower blinked. “It's not like you!”
“Wally!” Sunset stomped her foot, frowning. “No fair! I'm really really freaking out right now—!”
Wallflower shook her palms, wincing. “Wh-wh-what I mean is... something must have happened to it while we were gardening—” She paused in mid-speech, for her eyes were reflecting a sheen of sunlight.
Her girlfriend saw it. Sunset spun around, squinting.
The opposite end of the shed had been opened, its double doors stretched wide with a broken padlock dangling. Beyond the exit, the two girls could see the open streets of Canterlot...
...and a male figure in dark gray running down the sidewalk. He had a familiar brown messenger bag dangling loosely over his bobbing shoulders.
“That... that man...!” Sunset Shimmer pointed a shaky finger. “He stole my purse...” Her lower lip quivered. “...my belongings!”
In the meantime...
...two brown eyes floating a few inches from Sunset's fair shoulder turned amber, then flickered with the fiery passion of a thousand angrily burning suns. They were accompanied by a snarling breath that rivaled an army of dragons... or in this case a flock of bald eagles ready to shriek into the event horizon of glorious annihilation.
“Wait right here, my love,” issued a voice—thick and gravelly—and smelling ever so slightly of gun powder and apple pie.
“You got your cell phone? You should probably call Rainbow Dash and Twilight so they can—” Sunset heard a metallic cocking sound. “Huh?” She turned to look over her shoulder.
The teenage girl who was once Wallflower Blush had vanished behind a thick brown bulletproof trenchcoat being draped over angry shoulders. The figure in question stood before a tall metal locker with double doors—one showing a red cross and the other an emblem of bullets. From this container, Wallflower grabbed a thick pair of steel-toed boots which she quickly donned, followed by a three-starred army helmet—one size too small—which she planted briskly over her emerald scalp. Off a nearby table, she swiped a folded field shovel. Then—last but not least—she reached one last time into the locker with both arms and pulled out—not one, but—two enormous rocket launchers complete with a surplus of fragmentary bazookas.
“Wall...” Sunset stammered, stumbling backwards with a pallid expression across her face. “...Wallflower? What... what's all this...?”
“Last one alive lock the door...” Grumbled a gruff voice... or a feminine teenage voice trying to be “gruff,” but no less laced with a tangible layer of homicidal menace.
“Huh?”
What proceeded next was louder than thunder, and issued in three separate salvos that formed into one, created by Wallflower's storming exit from the shed—upon which she fired two rockets point blank into the ground—thusly propelling her body skyward in an act of flight that defied all reason and pacifism and anything else vaguely French.
“SCREAMIN EAGLES!!!"
The valkyrie botanist hollered, vanishing like a fired flare into the urban miasma.
And Sunset Shimmer clung to a stack of pots, knocked back in the acrid backdraft, alone with her undergarments.
Thoroughly soaked.
Huffing.
Puffing.
Sweating.
The purse-snatcher ran like a bullet down the downtown city block of Canterlot. Sunset Shimmer's satchel hung off his shoulder, but he kept it in place with an iron grip.
He ran across a few intersections. More than a few people looked curiously at him.
But it didn't matter. He had made good distance between himself and the owner of the purse. Once he got to his usual hiding spot, he would dig through the purse's contents, find the things most valuable for reselling, and ditch all the rest in a random dumpster. It was too dumb to work—only it had. Multiple times.
The young man couldn't help but smirk in mid-stride. Who said that crime doesn't pay—
Thoom.
The ground shook beneath his running sneakers.
Thoom!
The storefront windows blurring on either side of him rattled.
Thoom!!!
Car alarms went off. Dogs barked. Children sobbed.
THOOM!!!
A siren song—righteous with the anger of a million marching centurions—echoed from the concrete sprawl behind the thief:
"YOU ARE ALL DAISIES AND I WILL PLANT YOUR SORRY ASSES IN MY WAR GARDEN!"
“What the...?”
Barely able to run straight from all the tremorous explosions issuing from behind him...
...the purse-snatcher turned to look over his shoulder.
What he saw would forever be etched into his retinae. A woman—holier than hellfire—leaping like red glares off the ramparts of an eternal battlefield. Her emerald hair billowed ablaze beneath an iron helmet. In purgatorial slow motion, he could see her sailing earthward like a comet, only to impact the melting asphalt with a rocket exploding brazenly from a lead tube of mechanical nightmare.
THOOOM!!!
And in that burning instant, her body lifted in a conflagration of noise and ash, melting the parking meters and bursting the fire hydrants flanking her. Burning potholes formed in the ground as she lifted back up, her body blotting out the Sun. And as his panicked eyes made out her gnarled green hands loading a fresh new bazooka into a still-smoking cannon, her helmet lifted ever so slightly, and twin eyes peered down from the event horizon of that holocaustal zenith, stretching forever into some deathly pale shoreline of insatiable retribution, white as bone but hot as napalm.
And the Goddess of Death spoke upon the apex of her artillery parabola:
"COME AND GET IT, MAGGOTS!!!"
She fell.
She landed.
A rocket exploded—
THOOOM!!!
—and she launched over him. Towards him.
And Hell followed with her.
“Holy sdaisies!!!” the purse-snatcher cursed, his voice cracking as he jolted into a faster, flailing pace.
THOOOM!!!
Vans tipped over.
Trees caught on fire.
“YOU CANNOT RUN FROM ME; MY GUN IS FASTER!!!"
THOOOM!!!
“Jroses Crhododendrons!” the snatcher stumbled to keep an even pace.
TH-THOOOM!!!
"YOU WERE IN A BIG FAT HURRY TO DIE SON!!!”
“Holy flavendersing clilacs sbaby's breaths!”
THOOOOOM!!!!
“I AM GOING TO STRANGLE YOU WITH YOUR OWN FRILLY TRAINING BRA!!!"
Whimpering...
Squeaking... ….
...the thug ran tightly around a corner and down a perpendicular block.
Midair—without so much as shrugging—Wallflower Blush unholstered the other rocket launcher. Dual-wielding, she aimed herself into a building, fired point-blank into it, and shot herself at an angle to match the perpetrator—all the while leaving a crumbling glass-and-steel foundation smoldering behind her.
POWWWW!!!/i]
She flew after him, overtaking the purse-snatcher with her hungry shadow. Teeth gritted into the ash and sparks haloing her furious descent.
“IF GOD HAD WANTED YOU TO LIVE HE WOULD NOT HAVE CREATED ME!!!”
“Aaaaaaaaaaa—!!!”
The panting, wheezing snatcher flinched, strafing left and right as burning chunks of steel and melting concrete collided with the ground on either side of him. Women, children, and families ran for cover as the entire sky rained napalm.
“Aaaaaaaaaah! Fvenus fly trapsing CSpanish moss on a fpoison oaking fdaffodils stick!!!”
THOOOOOOM!
Wallflower Blush flew extraordinarily high, having spent her last rocket. There was no dispenser nearby, so it was time to finish this. With her twin steel-boots trailing with flame, she reached deep into her trenchcoat, whipped out her shovel, and yanked it aside. The instrument unfolded with a twofold cl-click, glinting murderously in the bright afternoon sun.
"I AM GOING TO CLAW MY WAY DOWN YOUR THROAT AND TEAR OUT YOUR VERY SOUL!!!”
That issued, she allowed gravity to run its course, and she descended thunderously towards the puny thug's rectangular hit box, swinging the shovel at full speed.
==DIING!==
“AAAAAAAAUGHHH!” The purse-snatcher ragdolled violently into the side of a parked sports car, crumpling it. Fireworks went off all around as Wallflower landed loudly in front of him, towering over the fetal fiend while billowing confetti briefly framed a translucent achievement icon that hovered over her head. “AAAAH! MY BLOOD! SHE... SHE PUNCHED OUT ALL MY BLOOD!”
“Rrrrrgh!” Her helmet flopped as she reached down, yanked the putrid vermin by the collar, and hoisted him up—trembling—into her iron-wrought sneer. “I will send my condolences to your kangaroo wife!” And she raised the blood-stained shovel into the sunlight once again, glintingly.
“No! No! Please!” Scrambling, the thief hoisted Sunset's purse off his shoulder and held it out towards the smoke-trailing teenager. “Take it! I beg of you! Just lemme go!”
Wallflower glared... glared... glared... and snorted. She let go of the thug—
“Ooof!” He fell on the floor, shivering.
Wallflower Blush shouldered the purse like a fallen comrade, cracked the joints in her neck, and pointed the sharpest point of her shovel at him. “You're a disgrace to the uniform." She spat. “Get a haircut, hippie.”
He panted. “I will!” He nod-nod-nodded. “I will I will I will!” Scrawling backwards on all fours like a conspiratorial crab, he eventually broke into a squealing sprint, disappearing amidst the crumbling ruins of the once proud downtown heart of Canterlot.
Wallflower Blush squinted steely after him the entire time, like an aged actor might address an empty chair at some political convention, when all of a sudden, from behind—
“Wally!”
“Chuuuuu—?” Wallflower twirled about in slow motion. The trenchcoat, helmet, rocket launchers, and even the boot peeled off of her like soft petals in fall. Exposed prettily to the sunlight once more, her earthen eyes sparkled with adoration and her emerald hair shimmered like a well-budgeted series introduction. “Sunny Buns! My love!”
“Sunny Buns?” A breathless Sunset leaned her sweaty self against the cornerstone of a crumbling building, blinking at her. “That's new—Eeep!” She wheezed as she was at the receiving end of a soft, girlish, well-perfumed hug.
“Heeeeeeeeeeee!” Wallflower nuzzled-nuzzled-nuzzled her shoulder. “It's gonna be okaaaaaaaaaay! Don't you worry!”
“Oh! My purse!” Sunset smiled with relief, grasping the satchel in question as it was victoriously handed to her. “That's cool too!”
“Sorry I couldn't get it back for you faster,” Wallflower cooed, pensively touching two fingers together.
“It's... it's quite alright...”
“I hope your gift for me isn't broken,” Wallflower said. “By the way, what is it?” She chewed her bottom lip with anticipation.
“Well...” Sunset exhaled. “It was meant to be a surprise. But... after all this...” She blushed slightly. “...I might just let you use it on me instead.”
“Heeheeheehee!”
“Hahahahahaha—”
P-Pow!
The two girlfriends flinched, grabbing each other. They looked nervously into the heart of Canterlot.
A burning mess of fallen buildings, exploded cars, and toppling lampposts rippled in the vaporous fumes of war. All around—street after street—rocket blasts formed deep holes in the concrete, exposing sparking electrical wires and spurting drainage pipes. Alarms were buzzing, anguished voices were moaning, and a few children could be heard sobbing as they searched in vain for their mothers.
“Uhm...” Sunset Shimmer cleared her throat. “How about a second gift?” Her smile twitched. “Like an impromptu vacation to Fiji.”
Wallflower nodded, planting her helmet back on and hiding her eyes. "Sun Tzu's got nothing on us.”
Author's Note
