The bridge is empty when I arrive, although for all I know I’m a little early. We didn’t exactly set a time beyond the vague approximation of the evening, but that’s alright. The dark comes early to Canterlot in the winter, and having some time to myself probably isn’t a bad thing, and today has been an objectively shitty day.

“One, two, Sunny’s coming for you~” I sing the familiar tune under my breath as I lean against the rail and watch the water move slowly beneath me.

By now, Tempest is probably almost out of the city, assuming she made a beeline. She might’ve stopped for food or something else, and realistically speaking I know that I could find her if I tried. All I would have to do is step into the Dreamtime, reach for the familiar toil of her mind, and then pull myself there.

I don’t.

Nothing healthy is going to come of that if I do.

“Three, four, better lock your doors~”

Lock them tight. Keep me out. The last thing anyone needs is me in their lives because all I’ll bring them is bad dreams and bloodshed. Just because you remember the dead doesn’t mean you should offer them a place at your table.

“Bad luck,” I mutter.

“What is?”

“SHIT!” I startle backward and stare at Wallflower Blush.

“Oh, uhm, sorry,” she steps back and wraps her arms around herself. “I probably should have said something, but you looked like you were thinking about something important.”

I blow out a sigh and put a hand over my chest. Dead or not, my heart almost leapt right out of my ribcage. How is it I can never tell she’s there?! It’s nuts. She’s like one of those actors in downtown who masquerade as statues: totally in the background right until they move and you damn near shit yourself.

“No, it’s okay,” I say, waving off her apology. “I should just… fuck, I dunno, put a bell on you or something.”

She laughs quietly, and I work up the strength to smile at her. She’s wearing the same dark coat and black boots as before, and what looks like a frumpy sweater underneath that. Her hair is still a tangle of green, and she cards her fingers through it a few times in what I think is a habitual tic as she looks up at me.

“So how was your day, Pretty Girl?” I ask, turning on what I tentatively label as my charm.

I think it’s on because her cheeks go a little pink.

“Are you always going to call me that?” She asks with a slightly crooked smile. “And it was okay… it was quiet.”

“Sounds nice, and yeah, probably will,” I reply.

Smirk, Shimmer, smirk. Smile like there’s nothing wrong. Smile until your face splits open because everything is fine and nothing is going wrong.

“What’s wrong?”

Fuck.

My smirk falters.

“Why would something be wrong?” I ask, forcing a chuckle. “I’m fine.”

Wallflower shakes her head as she turns to stare up at me in confusion. She’s looking at me like she can’t decide what to make of me, or like there’s something clashing in her mind.

“I… you look sad, that’s all,” she says finally.

Whatever momentum I had going that was keeping me together slowly drains out of me. I sag backward against the rail and slide down until I’m sitting on the miserably cold sidewalk of the bridge, and wrap my arms around my knees, clutch them close, and bury my face against my legs.

“Sunset?!” Wallflower's tone pitches higher as she kneels beside me.

“M’sorry,” I sob.

All of a sudden I can’t stop crying. It’s like the whole world just hit me all at once. Being outnumbered, being caught in a war, the breakup, losing Tempest not just as a partner but as a friend and as one of the very few pillars I thought I could reliably stand on just slams into me like a hammer, and now I can’t even breathe.

It’s too much.

It’s all just too much.

Arms wrap around me and pull me into a warm embrace, and suddenly my vision is filled with tangled green hair as Wallflower holds onto me, and against all reason, I cling to her. I bury my face against her shoulder and let out what little I have left in me.

Turns out if you hurt them bad enough, even a Killer can cry.

I’m not really sure how long we sit like this, but it’s probably longer than I can afford. There are too many things left to do, too many threats to manage, too many Killers to track, too many leads to follow up on, and for the first time in a long time, I’m really not sure I can do this.

“You really aren’t anything like I imagined,” Wallflower says quietly.

I laugh weakly as I draw away and wipe at my eyes and nose.

“You imagined meeting me?”

Wallflower clams up and looks away as she sits down beside me, and I laugh a little more. She’s cute… and really closed off. I know the look because I’ve worn that look. It’s the look of someone that the world has treated badly over and over, and maybe some of it was her fault, but I’d be willing to bet the majority wasn’t.

Unlike me, I’d be willing to bet someone as sweet as Wallflower probably just got dealt a shitty hand and had to play it out regardless of what she wanted from life.

“Uhm, can I ask what happened?” Wallflower looks over at me with her head resting on her knees. “You seemed… well, not so bad yesterday.”

I snort and nod.

“Yeah well, a lot can change in twenty-four hours,” I reply. “My girlfriend left me, for one… and it turns out the whole time I thought we were fine she was basically dying on the inside, so go me.”

“Why didn’t she say anything beforehand?” Wallflower asks. “You’re not psychic.”

Well, that’s only technically true. Oneiromancy is a distant cousin to Cerebromancy—true mind magic—so in the strictest, definitional sense of the term, I kind of am psychic. Just not the kind that Wallflower means.

“I’m not the easiest person to talk to,” I say.

Wallflower watches me for a moment, unmoving and unblinking, before wrinkling her nose slightly and shrugging.

“I uhm… I guess I’ll take your word for it,” she says.

“Cute.” I smirk at her, and it’s a little more genuine this time. “But really, I’m… I’m kind of intense most of the time. I have this bad habit of running roughshod over people to get where I think I need to go, and I think I just ran her over one too many times.”

Tempest stood by me for so long. She endured my outbursts as much as I endured hers and we fought almost as often as not, but neither of us wanted to admit how unhealthy we were getting so we just faked it. Fake it til you make it, right?

“She and I… we went through some bad shit together and came out of it holding hands, but…” I trail off as I lean back against the rails and rub at my face. “I guess, maybe once we get past all the grim stuff we just didn’t have that much left in common.”

I drag my hands down my face and sigh. That was a fact that I’d gone to great lengths not to think about or admit to myself, but the truth is that I know I’ve been pulling away from Tempest for the past few months, and she was doing the same thing. Neither of us said anything about it maybe because we didn’t want to confront it, but the truth is that we've been drifting apart for a long time.

That last argument in the apartment was the breaking point, and even through all of that Tempest still made one last attempt to reconcile and try again.

“She wanted me to go with her to Marexico,” I say, laughing bitterly as I stare up at the snow-split sky. “To Marexico! Me! Can you even imagine?!”

“Not really,” Wallflower says. “It sounds like she wanted you to run away, and that… well, it doesn’t really seem like you, I guess.”

Another snort escapes me.

“Says you,” I reply with a chuckle. “All I’ve ever done is run away… mostly from the people who love me.”

“Why?”

Why indeed. Why did I run from the orphanage where I was raised so many times despite there being nowhere for me to go? Why did I run from Princess Celestia after defying her again and again? Even when the Anon-A-Miss scandal hit, all I did was run.

I ran all the way off the edge of the roof.

“I don’t know,” I say quietly.

Wallflower makes a small, thoughtful hum as she turns her head to stare across the street before leaning back to stare up at the sky with me.

“Maybe because it’s the people we love, and who love us, that hurt us,” she says finally. “Because this whole world is ugly like that, you know? It just is.”

An ugly world.

Maybe Wallflower is right. It’s certainly nihilistic, but the fact of the matter is that she’s not exactly wrong. Loving someone means opening up to them, opening up means being vulnerable, and the hard truth is that I’m really shit at letting myself be vulnerable.

That’s probably why I ended up pulling away from Tempest in the first place.

“Sure is foggy out tonight,” Wallflower remarks quietly.

My heart all but stills in my chest at her words, and I sit up sharply. I got distracted… complacent! I take a deep breath and spit it out in a curse as I clamber to my feet, dragging Wallflower up with me. I can taste the copper and ash of the Old Stain’s realm leaking through.

“Hey! What are you—?”

I turn and grab her by the shoulder.

“GO!” I snarl, thrusting a finger out and away towards Whitetail.

The Fog splits and opens in a tunnel at my command. The Fog is still thin and weak, and I can yoke it to my will for a while yet, but not forever. Soon it will be too thick for anything human to escape it.

Wallflower’s eyes widen as she stares down the tunnel of Fog that’s swirling ahead of her before turning back to me.

“Sunset what’s going on?” Her voice cracks, and I grimace.

“Wallie, listen to me,” I say calmly, taking her face in both hands as I stare her down.

The whites of my eyes blacken and my pupils ignite into cold embers.

“Get. OUT!”

Wallflower’s staggers away from me, then turns tail and runs. So much for my new friend. I won’t be able to look her in the eye after this but I should probably have a chat with her after I beat this sorry Fog-baby to make sure she doesn’t go post my ass up on creepypasta or something.

My human shape falters and shifts as I turn back to face the side of the bridge leading towards the Commons. Blades like silver knives slice out from fingers whose skin darkens to rubbery red. Blue ice flows through my veins and Fog sinks into my muscles; into my limbs and my heart, tainting my tongue with the blood and ash of the Trials.

“Which one are you?” I snarl into the Fog. “Legion? Or maybe their gunslinging handler? Did you track me here to take me out? Better shoot fast before I shove that rusty harpoon launcher right up your—”

A raw, wet noise like the panting of a diseased coyote precedes a shape emerging from the Fog. It’s not tall, at least I don’t think so. The shape, at first, stops me in my tracks because it doesn’t look even remotely human. Most Killers are at least humanoid. As it resolves, though, I see why it looked so misshapen.

It’s wearing a long, mantled coat of crudely cut brown leather done in an older style, maybe seventeenth century, that's covering a hideous hunch and whose hood drapes over whatever ruin is made of its face. Its hands are mutant things, clad in gloves custom made to accommodate a hand with too many fingers and it moves with an ugly, limping gait that reminds me of no one so much as my twisted older brother ‘Billy’.

One gnarled hand is twitching; opening and closing in a manner that’s familiar, and it takes me a moment to realise it’s the same tic I have for clashing my fingerblades together. The other hand is gripping a cane whose dark, wooden length is twisted with age, and whose head is capped with dented, bloodstained metal.

“What,” I hiss, taking a step back, “the fuck are you?”

Its free hand stills then jerks out to the side. The nameless Killer snaps their fingers and the Fog spirals and congeals into their hand in the shape of a vial-and-syringe.

“The Narc.”

The name spills from me before I can stop it, and it cocks its cowled head in a manner that makes it look almost… amused.

“Narc?” Its voice is a wet, raw-meat burble. “No—” It hooks a thumb under the depressed plunger of the syringe in its hand and draws it up, and the Fog in the air thins as a golden serum fills the vial. “—no Narc here, Shimmer.”

A chill goes down my spine at the sound of my name at the same moment it jams the syringe into its chest and injects.

Spasms wrack its body as it snaps its head up to stare at me with hollow eyes and a shattered jaw, both like caverns lit from within by poisonous gold.

“Call. Me. BLIGHT!”

It moves even faster than the Legion, bolting forward with manic glee, twisted legs pumping as it careens forward. I barely have time to think, so I don’t. I flicker to the side, slipping between the veil of the Dreamtime for a brief moment and stepping out a few feet to the left.

The Narc—no, the Blight—rips through the space I was occupying a split second prior and slams into the railing like a rodeo bull. I’m about to jeer at it, too, but—

“OH SHIT!”

The Blight recovers so fast I have no time to react. It kicks off from the rail it just slammed into like a goddamn pinball, shrieking as it lashes out with its cane. I try to dodge but it’s too fast even for me and the metallic head cracks across my skull, loosening teeth and rattling my brain as it sends me sprawling and rolling across the asphalt.

Its chuckle is an ugly glutinous noise that starts in the back of its throat as it advances on me, smacking the head of the cane against its open palm.

“You’re slow, Shimmer,” the Blight cackles. “Where’s your flair? Where’re those blades of yours?”

I breathe deep.

And flicker.

“Here.”

The Blight staggers as I reappear practically in its arms with all ten of my blades buried deep in the taunting bastard’s guts. It doubles over and goes slack against me, its shattered jaw jagging back and forth as its beaten lungs try to drag in air and Fog.

I rip my blades out sideways, left and right, sending the Blight staggering back. My hands are sticky with fluids that reflect colors I have no proper name for, and which hurt my eyes to look at for too long, as I flick them clean.

“Your ichor is a shit substitute for real blood,” I snarl as I clash my fingers together at them. “But I’ll just have to settle for less.”

The Blight shakes with its wet, jackal laughter. The grotesque wound I inflicted is already sealing up around flesh that moves like viscous clay, and the Blight runs their hand over the grievous damage almost lovingly.

“Yeah, there we go…” it hisses. “That’s the stuff.”

It lurches forward like a striking snake, lashing the cane out in a hard lateral blow and the Blight follows with a rapid combination of swings that, to someone not paying close attention, look wild and uncontrolled.

I backpedal, step by step letting the blight force me back as it cracks concrete and asphalt with every blow while I track its motions.

It’s aggressive, but not stupid. It knows how to fight. The way it handles that cane is almost martial; turning it and catching its weight, rolling it over its palm and across the back of its hand to rapidly switch its position.

“Come on, Shimmer,” it sneers. “If you’re going to fight me then fight me! Unless you’re planning to run away again!”

My fingerblades clash in the instant before I vanish, lunging through the Dream and slicing through the veil.

Blades meet cane with a deafening clangor, and the Blight’s legs buckle under the weight of my blow while the hammering force drives them down to a knee as it catches all ten of my fingers across the length.

“Who’s running now?” I snarl.

“You.”

It’s unnatural muscles bulge and it knocks me back with main strength. I stumble over my own feet, wheeling my arms to fight for balance as the Blight surges forward, spinning its cane like a parade baton around its body. It straightens out, and its hunch distorts freakishly to accommodate its new posture, and I have to blunder back to keep from getting brained from a brutal lateral cross-swing.

“Faster, Shimmer!” It laughs. “Let’s go faster!”

Blight lashes out, and I slash wide, knocking away blows left and right, and every hit sends shocks up my arms.

They’re playing too much though. They’re letting me learn how they move and how they think, and soon I find my feet, and a second later I find my rhythm too. My wild slashes refine into graceful, spiraling strikes; I step forward, then turn, slash, step, turn, slash, and suddenly it's Blight backing up as my fingerblades bite the air in front of them like gnashing teeth.

They strike wide, swinging the heavy cane like a club at my head.

I flicker.

The heavy head hits dead air and carries on as I reappear right where I’d left off before dropping low inside their reach and twisting violently to slash upward.

Fog-forged silver blades split through mutant flesh, tendon, and bone, then out the other side, and the Blight shrieks as its arm and cane go flying and ichor sprays in arterial arcs from the severed stump as it rears, then staggers and falls flat on its back clutching at the ruin of its arm.

While the Blight thrashes on the ground I walk over to where their arm fell, casually pick it up, then make my way over to them to toss it beside them.

“Y’dropped this,” I say before stepping over them and planting my boot on their chest.

Their pained snarls warp into something like laughter as they jerk and twist under my foot.

“Who are you?!” I bark. “Which one made you? The Old Stain? The Thief?!” I drop down until I’m straddling them and press two fingerblades to their temples. “I could reach into your diseased brain and rip it out, but honestly I’d rather not root around in there, so talk before I start cutting bits off! And believe me, Blight—” I grip them by the collar of their long coat and wrench them up to face me—“at the rate you heal there’ll be more of you on the floor than attached by the time I let you die.”

They don’t answer my threats, they just convulse in paroxysms of high-pitched laughter that slowly recedes from the wet jackal howl to something… human.

“Why are you laughing?!”

“Sorry! Sorry!” Blight cackles as they wave their one remaining hand, and the sound of their—no, her—voice cracks me across the head and leaves me more dazed than if she’d walloped me full-force with her cane. “I just… I’m happy! I’m so happy!”

Blight grips the hem of her hood and pulls it back. The shattered, cavernous face is gone, as is the poisonous gold that lit it from deep inside, and in its place is one that's far more terrible.

Her eyes are a soft shade of cerise that glitters with happy tears as she lunges up past my numb, stunned hands and wraps her remaining arm around me, hugging me tightly and pressing her cheek to mine, shrouding my vision with short prismatic strands, and as she does, a tiny, near-invisible strand of sapphire light twinkles into existence between us.

Despite the fact that her right arm is entirely gone, Rainbow Dash hugs me for all she’s worth as she laughs uproariously.

“I knew you’d get out of that hellhole!” Rainbow continues, giving me another squeeze before drawing back to look me in the eyes. “You’re way too good to let that thing in the dark keep a hold of you! When did you get back?”

I jerk backward and out of her grip, stumbling up onto legs I can’t quite feel. My fingers clash against one another over and over and over. I’m trying to drown out the ringing in my skull but it’s not working. This isn’t real. It’s not real.

The last of her mutated Killer shape sloughs away from her as she stands up, leaving behind the lithe and limber runner I once held so close to my heart that I let her stab me in it. She picks up her severed arm with the same casual disregard I had, jams it against the stump, and the flesh twists sickeningly as her severed limb reattaches itself.

This can’t be real.

“Ooh! Ow! Pins and needles!”

Rainbow Dash gives her right arm a few good shakes, then tests her grip a couple of times before tightening her fingers around something invisible. As her fingers close, her cane folds out of the Fog from wherever it had flown when I tore her arm off.

“Good as new!” Rainbow smirks as she holds up her cane and arm triumphantly.

Her smile fades after a moment, softening back as she sighs.

Rainbow Dash is the Blight, and the Blight is the Narc. She’s the Killer who’s been murdering her way through the drug scene of north Canterlot for the past year.

“Still hate me, huh?” She asks as she sets her cane down, lets go, and it stands upright of its own accord. “That’s okay… like, I get it, I really fucked you over.”

I’m too shocked to even feel the reflexive hate I have for her right now.

“How?”

“Huh?” Rainbow raises an eyebrow.

I just gesture at all of her.

“Oh.” She looks down at herself, then over at the cane, then chuckles as she looks back up. “It’s kind of a long story, but uh, the short of it is that I went through a rough patch after you 'died'. Took a few bad turns and did some bad things, but I’m doing a lot better now.

“So let’s see, uh, me and Fluttershy got together, and she’s been really good for me, y’know? Keeps me honest and all that. I had a, uh… well, I got into some bad stuff, but I went to rehab and I still go to all the meetings and junk and—Oh!” She digs into her pocket, then pulls out a large, wide coin. “Check it out!”

No… not a coin.

A chip.

“One year clean!” She says proudly. “Fluttershy was over the moon when I came home with it, you shoulda seen her.”

I’m supposed to be the queen of bad dreams here. Me. I’m not supposed to be trapped in a waking nightmare more surreal than Rarity’s blood-watered corpse-tree.

Rainbow tucks the chip back into her pocket before looking back up at me.

“Anyway, when I heard you were back I just had to swing by,” she says with a small grin. “I missed the hell outta you, y’know? Even if we aren’t friends anymore, I’ve still got your back, okay?”

“You’re a murderer,” I say bluntly.

“And?” Rainbow asks with a shrug. “They’re pushers and dealers. Y’know how many people they’ve killed with all the junk they’re peddling? I know there’s that whole—” she raises her fingers in air quotes— “if you kill a murderer the number in the world stays the same, but I figure if I kill like, a shitload of’em, then it balances out the other way, right? Or, I guess, maybe it’s just the principle of the thing, y’know?”

It’s hard to argue her point. The Narc’s MO has always been the scum of Canterlot’s underbelly, but still…

My fingers clash together as I narrow my eyes at Rainbow and start to circle around her. She doesn’t look like a half-assed Killer. Not like the Legion. Her body, her powers, the way she casually manipulates the Fog… no, her nature was forged by the master of the Trials.

I’d bet my blades on it.

“You’re not with the Thief,” I state, rather than ask.

“Hell no,” Rainbow says, shaking her head. “The Entity pushed another one of us through to get back at them. I’m on your side.”

Metal shrieks against metal as my fingers twitch.

“I’m not on the Entity’s side, Dashie,” I hiss.

She shrugs, unperturbed by my tone. “Yeah? Neither am I. I just work for the dude, okay? I said what I said… I’m on your side.”

My sharp teeth grind as I clench my jaw tight. I hate her so much that my blood feels like it’s going to boil right out of my veins, but the fact of the matter is that I am hilariously outgunned right now. As much as I want to spit in her face, I can’t turn down the help… for the sake of my friends and my sisters, I can’t afford it.

“I hate you.”

“I know.” Rainbow steps forward and holds out a hand. “But I owe you, so you’ve got me whenever you need me, a’right? You’n me, Shimmer, just until all this crap is over, then, if you want, I’ll never talk to you again. How’s that?”

Blowing out a slow breath, I force my power to recede back into the depths of my soul. Red flesh and blue veins fade away, leaving clean amber skin behind as my fingerblades withdraw and fade into the Fog that surrounds us, and my black longcoat ripples and dissolves into my black leather jacket as I reach out to take the proffered hand and grip it tight.

“Deal.”

Author's Note

Fan the flames! Mold the metal! We are raising an army!

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