Rarity's Revenge

The insidious pair slowly trotted over to Starlight Glimmer’s bed. Rarity’s horn glowed brighter than it ever had, as the other four beds violently swung around so the pompous ponies had a front row seat to the show she was about to put on. An open sewing kit levitated over and loomed by Rarity’s side. Phoenix roughly yanked out the blade that was still wedged in Starlight’s eye, with a flurry of blood and vitreous gel. The other ponies reacted with nauseated reflexes, gagging and choking. Rarity chuckled. They hadn’t seen anything yet.

“Subject three is the vessel chosen for base of the Sleipnir project – the pony par excellence – that will act as the main offering to the Prince of Healing,” Rarity stated. “I will now begin the operation.”

Using a pair of staple removers, Rarity slowly yanked every single staple from the surgical wounds on Starlight’s hips to the music of bawling, shouting and begging of the other ponies to be let go, or at least not be forced to witness what was soon to happen. Starlight herself was too busy wincing from the pain to say anything but found herself becoming increasingly annoyed by Rarity’s happy demeanour. Phoenix levitated the scroll over so Rarity could examine it. She took a brief look and used another new scalpel blade to widen the wound on the right. It was the beginning of a long, bloody procedure, as Rarity tore through the already damaged tissue to access the pelvic bone. In removing Starlight’s legs, Rarity made sure to cut two circular holes, to allow for two acetabulum sockets to be inserted. She inserted the back leg into the bloody mass of flesh, so the hip joint connected with one of the pre-cut holes in the bone. As Phoenix used his glowing horn to fuse the two bones together, Starlight screamed a sickly wail.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” She shrieked.

“Aw, what’s wrong baby boo?” Rarity teased. “You can dish it out, but you can’t take it?”

“All I did was test your resolve to see if you truly embodied the traits of those precious elements of yours!” Starlight cried.

“DON’T YOU DARE PULL THAT SHIT WITH ME!!” Rarity screeched, hitting Starlight in the stump of where her horn once was. “You forced us to kill one another to try and survive, just because you were pissed that Twilight had wings and you didn’t!! There’s more to being alicorn-worthy than having powerful magic, you useless waste of skin!!”

The shooting pain in Starlight’s head, as well as Rarity’s stinging words, silenced her for the moment. It was official; Rarity had cracked. If there was any undamaged cognitive function left in the fashionista’s mind, it was quickly fading away. Phoenix retrieved Jet Set’s right back leg and levitated it over to Rarity. He watched with delight as she fished through the muscle tissue to locate the second circular cut-out. He fused the second hip joint and observed Rarity sewing the tendons and muscle tissue together. She had provided him with many tributes in the time he had been teaching her – far more than the last unicorn he worked with – and he was most pleased with her progress. He was also very pleased with the amount of cutie marks she had fed to him, and the excruciating sounds of the ponies in this room were just as delicious as their marks.

Phoenix magicked the two left back legs from the freezer to the bed area, and Rarity began to attach the limbs to Starlight’s left side. Starlight tried desperately to black out by focusing on the pain or holding her breath, but it just wouldn’t happen. She could feel every little thing; the widening of the existing wound, the cutting back of muscle and tissue, the fusion of the legs to her hip bone. She cringed and flinched with every pass of the needle, and every hot singeing stroke of Phoenix’s healing touch. Why did it hurt so much if he was healing her?

“Healing often hurts, just because my power is curative, does not mean that it is painless,” Phoenix growled, as if hearing Starlight’s thoughts. “do not misunderstand, however – I am capable of making it painless, I just choose not to.

“Is she complaining about the pain?” Rarity asked, as she finished stitching the skin together.

“She seems to think that healing should be easy,” Phoenix elaborated. “that a noble power will have noble intentions.”

“That’s rich, coming from her,” Rarity sneered. “she twisted the noble qualities of the elements of harmony into a means of pain and suffering.”

“Yes, I remember fixing that thing she forced over your cutie mark.” Phoenix snarled.

“How is that possible?!” Starlight demanded. “That branding iron was enchanted with a permanence spell!”

“FOOLISH UNICORN!!” He bellowed, causing her to jump in fright. “Do you really think your magic is any match for a demon alicorn from Tartarus?!”

Starlight shrank into herself and flattened her ears against her head; the forsaken alicorn was terrifying.

Admittedly, Phoenix preferred eating cutie marks to looking at them, but the more he saw how hard Rarity worked, the more the equals sign singed over her three diamonds infuriated him. Here was a mare so psychologically damaged from what she had experienced, that she was waking up screaming and shaking and crying every night, and yet, she persevered in her studies. She would get up early every day, even when she hadn’t slept well, and threw herself into it; she sewed beautiful dresses, she studied the dark magics he recommended, she desensitized herself to the gore of medical procedures by watching surgery footage online, and practicing on small creatures. Phoenix had never had such a dutiful student before.

He was so impressed that he offered to fix her cutie mark, in exchange for leaving a heart-shape on her face. Rarity jumped at the chance, expecting a beauty mark-sized dot on her cheek. The outline surrounding her eye was a bit of a shock, but she accepted it because his own heart was in the right place. Besides, it was delicate and well-crafted, unlike the rough, savage branding that he had fixed in the process.

“Why are you doing this?” Diamond Cutter asked weakly.

Rarity silently pointed at Starlight as she had earlier, while she changed her heavily bloodied surgical mask for a fresh one.

“No, really, why?” He probed.

“A year ago, Starlight Glimmer decided to torture me and my friends in a sick survival game to prove that friendship has no effect on magical ability; I’m ashamed to admit that we did not do our elements justice at all, all of us acted selfishly at one point or another,” Rarity explained, making a long, deep incision from Starlight’s left shoulder down to her ribs. “I was the only survivor, and she gave me permission to seek retribution on my fallen friends’ behalf – presumably thinking that she was untouchable, and that I wouldn’t dare cross her – little did she know I had started plotting as soon as the initial shock wore off.”

“But the press said the other elemental ponies were just missing,” Jet Set flinched, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. “there was a huge investigation and the authorities are still looking for them.”

“I know, that’s the story I told them; that we had all been horse-napped and I had managed to get away, but when I led the authorities to a random cave where I’d said we were being ‘held’, I pretended that they must have been moved while I was gone,” Rarity worked the scalpel under the muscle tissue covering the scapula, doing her best to ignore Starlight’s agonised cries. “it was dreadful, I feel so guilty for what I did to survive, but I had to do it.”

“Yeah, Rarity, tell them how you tricked Fluttershy into drinking poisoned cider in the final round.” Starlight snickered, before Rarity slashed some of the muscle to shut her up.

“Fluttershy, bless her soul, was so timid and frail, I knew she wouldn’t have the guts to get proper vengeance on this pathetic mule; I feared that she wouldn’t even have the strength to go on living after the trauma we had faced,” Rarity admitted. “all that pain and suffering was the result of Starlight Glimmer’s disappointment of not feeling truly accepted by Ponyville; by us ponies who represented friendship.”

Starlight grinned smugly to herself between wincing. At least Rarity had learned something worthwhile from the test.

“So, what will happen to us once this is over?” Upper Crust asked nervously.

“Quiet! I need to focus!” Rarity snapped.

She had reached the scapula, but it wasn’t quite the right shape for her to seamlessly add Diamond Cutter’s forelegs. Her horn ignited, and she slowly reshaped the bone, causing more pained shrieking from Starlight as her very frame was being warped and altered from within. Rarity changed the blade on the rotary cutter from a circular blade to a long cutting one and set about slicing a round hole in the newly triangular shaped scapula – more screaming and crying erupted, not just from Starlight, but from the ponies witnessing this carnage.

Phoenix held Diamond Cutter’s forelegs in his magic, forcing the stallion to turn away to avoid the sight of his own limbs floating in the air. Diamond started quietly weeping. His wounds no longer hurt as much, but he was still extremely aware of why those wounds existed. Rarity took the left leg from Phoenix with her own magic and forced it into the custom slot she had created in Starlight’s scapula. Phoenix then obliged her by fusing the bones together with his horn. Rarity started sewing the sinew once again.

“I have never seen such quality stitching before.” Phoenix admired.

“Thank you,” She blushed. “my hand-sewing isn’t always this neat, but it’s a gift obviously, so I used a running chain stitch.”

“Do you mind not flirting while you butcher my body,” Starlight said in disgust. “it figures that the only way you could beat me is with more of your precious friendship; you can’t do anything on your own.”

“That’s it! I’ve had enough!”

Rarity’s face darkened. She stabbed the scalpel into the defiant mare’s other shoulder so hard that it stood upright, and Starlight hollered in pain. Rarity used a ribbon of magic to hold Starlight’s muzzle closed and began angrily stitching the mare’s lips shut. No neat and tidy stitching this time, in fact, Rarity purposely jammed the needle through the lilac-pink skin as roughly as possible; occasionally it tore, and she needed to re-stitch what she had just done. Blood poured from the punctures and dripped down her chest as Starlight sobbed, rueing the day she ever laid her blue eyes upon the seamstress unicorn.

“Now keep still, or I’ll sew your eyelids shut too!” Rarity threatened through clenched teeth.

Rarity was getting irritated. Why be so patient and meticulous on somepony who wouldn’t appreciate it? From its embedded place in Starlight’s right shoulder, Rarity dragged the scalpel down to the ribs, truly savouring the muffled screams and spurts of blood that followed. She scratched violently at the flesh, ripping through the muscle and tendons without her previous level of care. Blood had been splashing on Rarity’s once pure white coat throughout this ordeal, but as her anger grew, blood sprayed on her face in long projectile lines. Just as she had done with the left side, Rarity used her magic to shift the shape of the scapula; but decided to be a touch more sadistic with it. She wrenched the bone to be much, much longer than necessary, cruelly twisting it to look like a corkscrew, gleefully watching Starlight’s shoulder contort and her face scrunch up in agony.

“Rarity.”

She was snapped out of her own thoughts by the deep, slightly stern voice of Phoenix, as Starlight’s bone returned to its usual size and shape.

“Phoenix?” She asked, glancing up at him with her sparkling azure eyes.

“I am all for tormenting deserving ponies, but she has many, many years of torment ahead of her,” He stated blankly. “redirect your focus to finishing the project.”

“You’re right,” Rarity gave an admiring smile. “you’re always right.”

Rarity calmed down and set about completing her task. She hummed to herself, warping Starlight’s scapula as she had before, but doing so only as much as she needed in order to attach the other foreleg. She cut a circular hole into the bone as peacefully as though she were cutting an armscye into a cotton shirt. Phoenix once again assisted with attaching Diamond Cutter’s foreleg to Starlight Glimmer’s manipulated scapula, fusing the bones with his lit-up horn, and Rarity casually sewed the muscles, tendons and flesh together, while using her magic to attach nerves and arteries.

“There, perfect!” Rarity purred as she stepped back and admired their work. “Is this tribute enough to pay off my soul debt?”

“Soul debt?” Lavender Bloom choked out.

“Yes dear,” Rarity nodded. “are you so detached from this situation that you did not hear me earlier? I summoned my darling Phoenix from Tartarus, and to do so, I had to promise payment of a soul – no one said it had to be my soul.”