We Are Legionby I-A-MChaptersAnd AlwaysNight & DayIn The MountainsAnd In The TombsWhat Is Thy NameAnd AlwaysI know everyone says that no matter how bad it is someone else has it worse, but lately I’ve been starting to wonder about that. See there ain’t an infinite number of people, which means if someone has it worse than someone else, then ya got folks worse off than that person, well… Eventually, you gotta get to the bottom of the barrel. “Why are we even here?” Scootaloo asks as she scrapes a series of curling ‘S’s into the wooden table the three of us are sitting at with a sharp bit of rock. Despite the freezing temperatures and literal snow on the seats, we’re outside. All of us are wearing hoodies and jackets. I’ve got my old denim jacket over my grey hoodie, while Scootaloo has her grey denim vest over her black one, while Sweetie’s just got her thick, slightly-too-big hoodie that’s deep black and practically swallows her whole. We're outside largely because there ain't nowhere else for us to be. None of us are welcome in the cafeteria, and it’s been that way since the tail end of our freshman year. Because no one sits anywhere near Anon-A-Miss. “Because if we ain’t here then we gotta be at home?” I say as I pick at my lunch. A whole fucking school year and no one has forgotten what we did, not the students and definitely not our families. The harassment ain’t even really cooled down. We’re still the least popular girls on campus and it showed. It showed in me and Scootaloo as we drew further and further away from everyone else but our little group here at the table, but it showed most heavily—and worst—in Sweetie Belle. She was always the nicest of us, and she took what happened at the end of it all the hardest. Before everything happened she used to wear bright colors and always be smiling. Now she rarely shows any expression, wears almost all black, and I know for a fact she ain't been taking care of herself. “Anyone want my burger?” Sweetie asks tonelessly. “I’m… I’m not hungry.” Scootaloo and I both share a worried look. “I uh, I dunno if I’d call that a burger,” Scootaloo jokes weakly. “Pretty sure that’s not any kind of real meat, right ‘Bloom?” I prod the spongy patty and grimace. “Yeah, ain’t exactly farm-fed beef.” “So it’s not your brother?” Scootaloo asks. “Y’all don’t even go there.” I swat Scootaloo’s shoulder. Sweetie Belle smiles at our antics, but it’s a weak little thing. She has it the worst of us for a lot of reasons. Her family treats her like a pariah, and the school treats all three of us like human garbage, but between the three of us, Sweetie has always been the nicest. The most sensitive. We both try and cheer her up when we can, but it usually falls flat. The tiny smile I get out of her today is the best I’ve seen all week. The bell rings, signaling the end of lunch meaning we have ten minutes to get to class, but none of us move. We have gym next, and that’s pretty much hell. It gives all the students an excuse to mess with us and gives the teachers an excuse to turn a blind eye. Unless it gets really bad, they just let the students fuck with us and it always ends with Sweetie Belle in tears at least. “Skipping?” Scootaloo says more than asks. “Yeah,” I sigh. “Ah ain’t got it in me today, y’know?” “We’ll just get in trouble again,” Sweetie says quietly. Scootaloo and I both shrug in unison, and Sweetie doesn’t put up any more of an argument than that. We all silently agree to take the detention from playing hooky rather than deal with whatever new abuse the kids in gym have come up with. “Need anythin’ from yer lockers?” I ask. “Nah.” Scootaloo waves a hand and grimaces. “Someone stuck dog shit in mine, so I cleared it out.” “Mine’s got graffiti on it again,” Sweetie says softly. “I’ll pass.” Before any of the other students can come to bother us, we gather up our backpacks and move quickly around the back of the school. There’s a small area behind the gym that no one ever goes to, especially not when it’s raining, mostly because it smells like trash. As we head around the corner, I sidle up to Sweetie Belle, throw an arm over her, and pull her close and she tucks herself against me. Christmas this year had been a cold, stony affair. Applejack still couldn’t look me in the eye, and while Big Mac tries his best, he ain’t the most comforting type. Tie all that up with the fact that Granny passed a couple of months back, and that came along with getting harassed by a couple of conjobs before they finally split town, I’d say the only good thing that’s happened in the whole year and change since our big fuckup was Applejack finally getting laid. Twilight is nice enough, as city folk go. She’s a little weird, but I guess that’s just city folk in general. “How’s things at home?” I ask, looking over at Scootaloo. “Same old,” she says with a shrug. “Mom’s still in denial and Dad acts like I’m the antichrist… you?” “Mostly AJ ignores me now,” I say quietly, but my chest hitches as we reach the trash pile and take our usual seats, with Sweetie Belle practically in my lap. There’s been something on my mind lately, a really awful thought, but it’s been there all the same, and I hadn’t even brought it up to the girls. I’d hoped it would go away, but it never did. As the days and weeks pass it just gets heavier and heavier. “Am… Am Ah a monster, Scoots?” I ask. “Huh?” Scootaloo looks over at me, her hooded face painted with genuine confusion. “Because of Anon-A-Miss? I told you, just ‘cause it was your idea doesn’t mean we didn’t go right along with it, okay? If you’re a—” “Not that,” I say, shaking my head. “I…” The confession seizes in my throat, but as it does Sweetie Belle puts a hand on my cheek and turns my face away from Scootaloo so I’m looking just at her. Her pretty green eyes are framed by dark mascara to cover up her lack of sleep, and her soft curly hair pokes out from around her own hood. “What is it?” She asks. “You can tell us.” I put a hand over Sweetie Belle’s and close my eyes. “Ah’m… glad Granny passed,” I say bitterly, and on the tail end of my words I start to sob. “Ah… Ah couldn’t take it… the way she looked at me after it all came out! Lookin’ at me like she didn’t know me! Like Ah was a monster! That w-was worse than anything!” Saying the words is like vomiting poison. Granny was more like my mom than my grandmother. I don’t even remember Pear Butter’s face as anything but a picture because she died not long after I was born. Granny raised me, took care of me, taught me, and then, in the end, she couldn’t even look at me. “Shit,” Scootaloo says quietly. “That… fuck, I’m sorry Bloom we didn’t know.” I shake my head. “Ain’t any’a y’all’s fault,” I say as Sweetie wraps her arms around me and holds me tight while resting her head on my shoulder. “Ah’m the one who earned them looks.” Scootaloo opens her mouth to say something, probably to tell me I’m wrong, even though I ain’t, but she doesn’t get it out. A snowball cracks hard into the back of her head, and Sweetie Belle screams as Scootaloo staggers and faceplants into the snow. I’m up in an instant, dumping Sweetie Belle out of my lap as she scrambles to Scootaloo’s side and drops down beside her. I put both fists up, ready for the next throw as three pug-ugly teens approach from the far corner with nasty smiles on their faces. The Diamond Dogs. They were jerks before Anon-A-Miss. The whole mess just gave them an excuse to beat someone up that no one would complain about. Fido pitches a snowball at me and I knock it out of the air, ignoring the sting from my knuckles as I swipe the rock at its center. Rover and Spot throw their own snowballs and at first I think they aren’t even trying to aim at me. A split-second later, I realise I’m right. I knock the one snowball away with my arm, but I can’t do the same to the other, both of which were aimed at Sweetie Belle, so I do the next best thing. I put myself between her and the snowballs and take it to the chest. The impact puts me back two steps and knocks the wind out of me. I try to rally, but three more snowballs crack into my chest, shoulder and across my temple sending stars across my vision and putting me onto my back. Their jeering laughter fills my ears followed closely by Sweetie Belle’s sharp cry as a rock-filled snowball hits her. I’m back on my feet at the sound of Sweetie’s pained cry, and I’m seeing nothing but red as I barrel down at all three of the teenage boys. I’m not sure but I think I’m screaming as I ram into Rover, and I half-expect to just stop on the guy because he’s twice my size and better than twice my weight. Instead, he crumples around me with a wordless grunt of agony, and I swear I feel something give in his chest as I hit him. Then I’m up and swinging wildly. One fist connects with the side of Spot’s face, putting him on the ground like a sack of apples. Fido’s meaty fist slugs across the side of my face a second later sending me staggering, and he tries to follow up, cocking his arm back as he steps over Spot but I recover to fast, duck low, and lunge forward with a feral scream as I bury my head in his gut, knocking the wind from him in a painful wheeze as I bear him down to the ground on top of his friend, straddle him and start punching. Over and over, one hit, then two, then three, then I lose count as I grab him by his collar and drive my fist into his face again and again. “BLOOM!” Someone grabs me by the back of my hoodie and drags me off of Fido, and I whirl on them, fist raised as I snarl at— “Snap out of it and let’s go!” Scootaloo yells, grabbing me by the shoulders and dragging me away from the school as she does. “We can’t stay here! So if you’re gonna hit me then hit me and let’s fucking move!” Ice water sluices through me as I realise what I’d almost done. I don’t have time to say anything though as Scootaloo gives my hoodie another yank and then turns to start running away from the school grounds towards the QuikStop mart where we park our bikes so the other kids won’t mess with them. “C’mon!” Sweetie’s softer voice splits through my shock as she takes my hand and tugs and finally I start moving. We sprint through the rear fields of the school, each keeping pace with the other. I don’t know why but we never really run out of energy or wind. I’ve always been pretty athletic, and the same is true for Scootaloo, but Sweetie’s PhysEd scores have always been abysmal. That changed after we got out of the Trials. There’s something different about us now… something wrong with us, I think. Things are bad when we’re together, but at least we’re together. That all changes when we all go home, though. Something we started calling ‘The Greys’, because it really is like the world gets this grey filter over it. Sounds get dull. Feelings get dull. Food tastes like nothing at all and everything just fades into a dull roar of nothingness. At first I thought it was just me, but it didn’t take long for us to realise it was happening to all three of us. So we do our best to stay together. At least when we’re together, there’s still color. “You went fucking feral again, Bloom!” Scootaloo says angrily as we hit the edge of the school grounds, jump the ditch surrounding it, and land on the pavement. “Ah’m sorry!” I say. “Ah couldn’t stop!” “Yeah, we know,” Scootaloo says. “But every time they take a swing at Sweetie you just fucking lose it!” “And you don’t?!” I snap. “I get pissed, but we’re all getting our asses kicked here, okay?” Scootaloo replies. “I’m f-fine, you don’t have to worry about me so much,” Sweetie says quietly from my side as she wraps both of her arms around one of mine. She isn’t even out of breath. “Y’all can say that, but Ah’m still gonna,” I say. Scootaloo just shakes her head and smiles back at the two of us, and I do my best to return the expression. Even if there’s no one else in the world to take care of us, we’ll always have each other. “So…” I start, glancing over my shoulder at the school before looking back at Scootaloo, “Ormond?” “Pretty much our only option,” Scootaloo says with a laugh. “A’right,” I say. “Let’s haul ass.” Night & DayIt takes almost two hours to maneuver through the neighborhoods leading up to the Canterlot Heights, the second-ritziest part of town aside from the Gold Coast itself. It takes another hour to get past that, through the manicured hiking trails, and into the less walked sections of the mountain. Ormond is our haven and our hideaway. It’s the only place that we can just be alone, partially because of its bad reputation but also because I’m pretty sure the city’s just plum forgotten it’s up here. The place was, I think, an old ski resort. Or at least that was the plan. There’s still construction equipment and all kinds of stuff littering the place, and the resort itself ain’t even really finished. All I know is that the three of us found it not long after the bullying got real bad when we were wandering around together, dead-set on going anywhere but back home, and stumbled on the old trail that led to the resort, and since then it’s been the only place we can get a little peace. The snow is thick around Ormond as we get to the edge of the trail that once might’ve been a street, and we park our bikes in an old utility shed by the road that’s lucky enough to still have its roof and most of its walls. “Fuck it’s cold.” Scootaloo shivers as she stows our bikes and starts rubbing at her arms. “C’mon, let’s get inside and get the fire going.” I nod, even though I don’t feel all that cold. I shiver a little now and again, and I know it’s below freezing up here but it’s like the cold doesn’t get past my skin. Sweetie Belle curls up against me as we trudge through the snow toward the ramshackle ski lodge, and I throw an arm over her shoulders as Scootaloo runs ahead to shoulder open one of the doors and hold it ajar while I usher Sweetie in. “Get’er warm,” I say, “I’ll grab some firewood.” “Should still be some around back,” Scootaloo says, nodding towards the rear of the lodge. I know, but I nod anyway, and start moving around the edge of the lodge. The snow is still falling in thick, drifting clumps as I work my way through towards the one lumber bin that’s still solid enough to hold firewood without leaking. It should stay that way too. Scoots and I found some tools in the shed we use to keep our bikes safe and shored it up, and I waterproofed it with tar a few weeks ago before the worst snows hit. Prying open the box should be a two person job. I tell Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle it’s just the old farm muscle going to work, but really it just don’t feel that heavy. I lever open the woodbox and pull out some split logs, load them up into my arms, and hip-check the box shut before moving back around through the snow towards the entrance to the lodge. It’s a big place, and I’d say it’s seen better days but I ain’t actually sure that’s true. Seems to me like the old bastard has just been waiting to fall over ever since they put up the first load-bearing pillars. Ain’t that just a mood. “Ya got the kindlin’?” I ask as I walk in and dump the stack of logs into the raised fire pit to start arranging them. Scootaloo nods as she pulls a big box out from under one of the dusty, half-rotten tables and opens it to start pulling out rolled stacks of dry branches tied up together. “Gimme two,” I say, holding out a hand. Scootaloo tosses two of the rolls my way, I grab one but the other goes a little wide and bounces off of my knuckles. I cuss and swing around to grab it before it falls on the ground and rolls into a puddle or something, but a pale hand snatches it out of the air just before it lands. “Here,” Sweetie says softly. “Nice catch,” I say with a tired grin as I take it. I go about lighting the fire with the ease of long practice. You don’t live on a farm without learning to light a fire by hand after all. Soon enough the fire is lit, a blazing star in the middle of a miserable blizzard. It ain’t quite that bad outside yet, but it’s getting on, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Scootaloo, Sweetie, and I were stuck in Ormond til morning. Not that that’d be such a bad thing. There was a surprising amount of random crap left in Ormond after the workers left. Half of the rooms were set up for lodgers and overnighters, and most of those rooms are still serviceable. Can’t sleep in them though, on account of the cold, but the beds are still good… mostly. “You ever think about just… leaving?” Scootaloo asks quietly as she nudges one of the logs, turning it over and renewing the flame. “Just taking off somewhere?” I prop myself up on the ratty old mattress we’d dragged down from upstairs. Sweetie Belle is already asleep beside me, nestled close to the fire, and I stare across it at Scootaloo on the other side. “Once’r twice,” I admit. “Ain’t got any money, though. Kinda makes it hard t’just up’n leave.” “Yeah,” Scootaloo says, her voice trailing off until— “What if we did, though?” “Get money or leave?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. “Money.” “Well… Ah guess figurin’ we managed t’get enough to get us somewhere Ah’d be keen enough on it, s’long as, well, y’know…” I look down at Sweetie, then back up to Scootaloo, who smiles across the flames at me. “Duh.” She laughs and shakes her head. “Us three are together to the end… period.” I laugh with her, it’s a little hollow but it feels good. I don’t laugh much anymore, none of us do. It’s a pretty rare thing since the Trial and Sunset. Since the Nightmare and Anon-A-Miss, and between all the bullying and the Greys, we don’t have all that much to laugh about, I guess. The fire crackles as Scootaloo turns over another log. “So when are you gonna tell her?” she asks, looking pointedly at me, then turning her gaze down to Sweetie. “Tell’er what?” I ask sullenly. “How you feel,” Scootaloo replies. “I mean, she’s smarter than both of us put together. You know that, right?” “Depends on if ya count’er cookin’,” I say, earning a wry grin from Scootaloo that fades quickly. “Seriously, though, you know she knows.” “Yeah, Ah know.” I look down at Sweetie Belle and watch her for a moment as she snores quietly on the ratty mattress. Then I reach out and brush my fingers over her hair. It’s still long, and since she fell asleep more of it is spilling out around her soft, pale face. “She’d say yes,” Scootaloo says, gesturing with the poker. “Ah know,” I say. “Then why—?” “Because Ah can’t protect’er,” I say, before Scootaloo can finish. “Ah’d be a piss poor girlfriend. Can’t protect’er, can’t help’er, can’t take care of’er… all Ah’d be able t’do is sit there like a lump’n be useless.” Scootaloo sighs and continues to prod at the fire pit. I put a hand over Sweetie Belle’s arm, and she shifts silently in her sleep before turning over and wrapping her arm around mine and holding on tight. “It’s not your fault, y’know,” Scootaloo says. “So ya keep sayin’,” I reply acidly. “It’s not any of ours.” “Then whose is it?!” I snap, barely clamping down on temper enough to keep my volume low. The last thing Sweetie Belle needs is to wake up to her only two friends arguing. “Sorry…” “S’cool,” Scootaloo says with a shrug. “But it’s not your fault.” “She’s hurtin’,” I say, putting a hand on her arm. I hate how quickly the tears come. I’m angry. I want to be angry. I don’t want to cry. I already did enough of that. I ain’t got any more left, or at least I shouldn’t. Now I just want to be angry and find something to break. “It’s how she copes,” Scootaloo says softly. “We both tried to get her to stop but if she won’t listen to you, then she sure as hell won’t listen to me. And her family doesn’t give enough of a shit about her anymore to care.” “Ah just…” I can’t stop my words thickening under a sob, “Ah just wanna make’er better, Scoots… Ah just want’er t’be happy again.” I can’t stop the tears this time. They hit me hard and fast, knocking the wind out of me, thickening up my throat and nose with snot as hot tears like bubbles roll down my face. Scootaloo stabs the poker into the fire and gets up, walks over to me, and sits down on the edge of the mattress to put her arms around me and pull me close. I bury my face in Scootaloo’s shoulder and wrap my arms around her narrow middle. I do it carefully, I know she’s got bruises. She hugs me a lot harder. Not because I don’t have bruises, but because she knows that I don’t care. That I’d rather hurt and have the hug than not. “Ah love you, Scoots,” I sob. “Ah’m sorry Ah got us inta all this crap, it’s all mah fault, Ah sh-should j-just—” “Ssh,” Scootaloo puts a hand on the back of my head and brushes her fingers through my hair. “It’s okay, we’re all good, Bloom… I love you too, you and Sweetie. It wasn’t your fault, it doesn’t matter who came up with it, because we all did it.” “But Ah—!” “Together forever, remember?” Scootaloo says, cutting me off. “Us three? We're gonna be together forever. A soft hand grips my fingers, and I look down to see a sleepy Sweetie Belle staring up at me. She takes my hand and gives it a tug, and Scootaloo goes along with it, lying down on the mattress on one side of me while Sweetie Belle curls up on the other side, burying her face against my chest as she goes back to sleep. It’s freezing outside, and the firepit is just enough to keep the worst of it out. It’ll burn out by mid-morning sometime, I know, but we’ll be gone by then. “We’ll change things, Bloom,” Scootaloo says quietly as she snuggles up against my back, and I put a hand over hers and twine our fingers together. “We can do it.” I nod silently. Whatever it takes. For Sweetie and Scootaloo. For my best friends. For the girls who mean more to me than my own damn life. I’ll do whatever it takes. In The MountainsWe wake up early in the morning. The fire pit is still burning faintly, and the embers are nice and hot. It’s enough to chase out the worst of the cold and between that, the mattress, and two warm bodies wrapped around me, it’s the most comfortable I’ve been in weeks. Applejack will be mad because I’m not home, and probably relieved at the same time. If I’m not home, I’m not working… not doing my chores. But at the same time I know she hates me. She hates having me around. Hates looking at me. I’m just a reminder that her friend is dead for no reason. Worse than dead, honestly. She didn’t see what Sunset turned into, in the end. She didn’t see the hate in Sunset’s eyes… or feel the bite of her claws. Applejack never saw what my little plan really created, and that’s probably a good thing. If she ever knew what really happened to Sunset in that place, she’d probably just kill me. Sometimes, I think that would be a relief. “Hey, you up?” Scootaloo asks groggily. “Yeah,” I mutter. “Cool, got any food?” I sit up sullenly and cast my eyes around for my bag. Sweetie Belle mumbles something unintelligible in her sleep as she tightens her grip on my arm, and I smile a little as I reach out to brush her messy two-tone hair from her face. “Yeah,” I say after a minute. “Stole some stuff from the kitchen ‘fore Ah went t’school… figured this might happen.” “Always the gal with the plan,” Scootaloo says with a grin. I don’t smile. My last plan was shitty on a scale that beggared belief, so that wasn’t exactly what you’d call a compliment. I extract myself from Sweetie and plod over to where my bag lays at the edge of the mattress on hands and knees, fish around inside, then pull out a small tupperware. “S’a little busted, but Ah reckon it tastes fine,” I say as I crack it open and pull out a broken half of a fritter to pass to Scootaloo. Scootalloo takes it gratefully and starts eating. “Mmph, no pwoblem~,” she mumbles around the mouthful of pastry before swallowing. “Ah! I haven’t eaten since like, yesterday morning. I’m starving.” I’m not, but I don’t say it. My stomach feels like a stone. “Here,” I pass her the other half. “Ah got one fer me and another fer Sweetie.” “Awesome.” She grins as she takes the fritter and shoves it in her mouth. I pull out the long bottle of water I brought and sip some down before passing it to Scootaloo. I pull out the other fritter while I move around to Sweetie’s side of the mattress and settle down beside her near the fire. “Mornin’,” I say softly. She stares up at me with a chalky expression. I would give anything—anything—to see the light come back to her eyes. “Morning,” she says softly. “Hungry?” I hold up part of a fritter. “Ya oughta eat somethin’.” She takes it wordlessly and starts nibbling. Her heart isn’t in it, though. Like me, she’s not really feeling all that hungry, but she’s trying. For my sake and for Scootaloo, she’s trying. It breaks my heart. “So…” Scootaloo starts, lowering the other half of her fritter, “...what I said last night, y’know?” Sweetie and I both look over at her. “Y’mean ‘bout money?” I ask. “Yeah.” “What about it?” Sweetie chimes in sullenly. “No one who knows us would hire us, and even if they did then the moment they found out what we did we’d be gone.” I grimace. She’s not wrong. Time was that there were a number of family friends that would have hired me and any of my friends, at least seasonally, but I’m the black sheep of the family now. News travels fast along the branches of the Apple Tree, and over the last year, and especially at Christmas, it was made pretty clear that I wasn’t one of them anymore. Not really. “I know,” Scootaloo says. “That’s not what I’m talking about.” I raise an eyebrow, and start to open my mouth to ask what she is talking about then, when it hits me. “Scoots—” “I didn’t say it was a good idea,” she says bitterly before taking another bite of the fritter, chewing it and swallowing it down. “B—ack! W-water!” She flails for the bottle and I toss it to her. Scootaloo slugs down a few swallows, sighs and then laughs as she caps the bottle again and passes it over. “A-Anyway, I’m not saying it’s good or right or anything,” she continues. “But we’re not exactly looking at a lot of options and… and if we keep going like this, it’s gonna end bad.” I look around the miserable ruin of Ormond. It’s already bad. That this place—this forgotten, desolate strip of snowbound hell that barely has a roof and that no reasonable person would set foot in during the winter—is our refuge and home-away-from-home pretty much says it all. And Scootaloo’s right, it’ll get worse. “What are we supposed t’do? Knock over a convenience store?” I snap. “Why not?” Both Scootaloo and I both turn our heads slowly to look over at Sweetie Belle, who had just spoken up to say something that… that didn’t sound like Sweetie Belle at all. She gets up from the mattress and plods over to the side of the dying firepit to grab the poker and stoke the embers. “Are they gonna hate us more?” She continues softly. “Beat us up more? Knock us around more? Mess with our stuff more?” Sweetie looks up and over the fire at the pair of us staring at her. Her eyes are shadowed with exhaustion and heavy with gloom, but there’s something else, something deeper that’s lying just past the misery. “Why does it matter?” “Why does ‘knockin’ over a convenience store’ matter?” I ask with a weak laugh. “Y-Yer kiddin’ right?” I look between Sweetie and Scootaloo. Their faces are hard and bitter. They’re angry. Hell, I’m angry. I hate everything about this. I hate going to school, I hate coming home, I hate the looks everyone, even my own family, gives me any time I walk into the room. I hate the fact that I made one decision and it pretty much ruined the lives of everyone I love. But this is… “Seriously, Bloom,” Scootaloo says finally. “Why not? Sweetie’s right, what’ve we got to lose?” “Maybe we go t’jail?” I say blithely. “We’re still minors,” Sweetie says. Her voice is barely a whisper over the sound of the poker scraping at the hot ashes of the firepit. “Even if we mess it up we’ll just go to juvie, and there’s only one in the area so we’ll still be together, and then…” “Then at least we’ll be away from everyone else,” Scootaloo says sharply. “Everyone already looks at us like we’re a bunch of murderers, so some petty theft shouldn’t turn anyone’s worldview inside out.” I open my mouth to argue but nothing comes out. I should be able to argue against this, right? There should be a reason not to do what my friends are saying we should do… right? Except Scootaloo and Sweetie are making a good point. Everyone already treats us like garbage. Our families won’t look at us and when they do it's just enough to make us wish they hadn’t. We’re pariahs at school, or worse. We’re everyones’ punching bag because nobody wants to be the one to stick their neck out on account of Anon-A-Miss. Not even the teachers. Blind eyes all around. “Girls this…” I look between them, and a cold knot forms in my chest, and I trail off and look down. After a long moment of silence I look back up at my two best friends. “Ah guess… Ah guess this is where we’re at, huh?” I say. “Guess so,” Scootaloo says grimly. “Robbin’ people?” I say again. “Robbing stores,” Sweetie corrects gently. “Stores aren’t people.” She has a point. We weren’t mugging people. If we did do this, then we’d be taking money out of a till, not out of someone’s pocket. That made it a little easier to think of doing this. “”I’m tired of always… always getting hurt,” Sweetie says in an empty voice. “I’m so tired of hurting… I just want to go away.” The way she says ‘go away’ puts a chill down my spine, the look on Scootaloo’s face tells me I’m not the only one. “O-Okay, so say we do this thing,” I start, standing up and looking over at Sweetie. “How we gonna not get caught?” “Masks and gloves,” Scootaloo says. “Y’all got money fer that?” I ask dryly. “We’ve got gloves…” Sweetie says, then trails off for a moment before looking back up at the pair of us, “and masks.” “We do?” Scootaloo asks. I stare at Sweetie for a moment before closing my eyes and groaning. I know what she’s talking about and that just sounds stupid. “C’mon, Sweetie, ya can’t be serious!” I say, earning a questioning look from Scootaloo. “Do you have a better idea?” Sweetie asks. “They’re molded to our faces, so we know they fit!” “Wait, those things?!” Scootaloo barks. Then she starts laughing. Cackling, really. She rolls back onto the mattress and kicks her legs as she starts to laugh to the point that she’s not even really breathing anymore. I can’t help but smile a little at that, and even Sweetie Belle cracks a small grin as Scootaloo rolls around on the dirty mattress and howls. “Th-Those things are so creepy, though!” Scootaloo says finally, and breathlessly. “It weren’t mah idea for’em t’look like that,” I say, looking pointedly at Sweetie, who blushes. “But Ah guess fair’s fair, they’d work fine, right?” “Yeah,” Scootaloo agrees. “And we never turned them in for the art project because, let’s face it, if we’d brought them to class they’d have just ended up broken.” “Sweetie’s already got broke, remember?” I say. “When AJ kicked mah bag across the kitchen the day after Rainbow showed up?” “Broke, or improved?” Scootaloo asks, wiggling her eyebrows. “Seriously, I think you improved it.” The truth was we knew that Sweetie’s would never be accepted. The teacher would have taken one look at it and failed her on the spot. Rather than let that happen to Sweetie, Scootaloo and I just left our projects at home and told the teacher that we hadn’t done them. All three of us got zero percent on our projects that day, and afterward Sweetie hugged us and cried because she was so happy we were her friends. All-in-all? Worth it. “So… masks, gloves… we good?” “Weapons.” Scootaloo and I both look up at Sweetie Belle in shock, and she raises an eyebrow at us. “What?” she asks. “We’re… we’re robbing a place, right? So… we need to threaten them with something, don’t we?” I hadn’t thought of that, and if I’m being honest it doesn’t really sit right with me. But Sweetie’s right. If we just barged into a gas mart and demanded money with our bare hands, the only thing the clerk would do before calling the cops is laugh at us. “Ah got a steel huntin’ knife,” I say quietly. “Heavy old thing, too. It was mah papaw’s.” Scootaloo twists around, turns to the kindling chest, and drags it out, pops it open, and fishes around in it for a while before drawing out an old keyhole saw with a straight wood handle, a pointed tip, and a serrated metal blade. She closes it up before holding the tool up with a faint grimace. Nothing cut by that was gonna heal up quick or easy, but it’d put a scare into whoever she threatened with it. “I have something I can use back at the house,” Sweetie says. “And the masks?” “Back at mah place, where we made’em,” I say. “Your creepy chainsaw massacre basement?” Scootaloo says, nudging me in the ribs. She laughs, but the truth is that none of us like going in basements anymore. Not since we got strung up in one by Sunset after she went batshit on us. We did our project down there because we needed the tools and the privacy, but we got out of that place as fast as we could every night. “Yeah, yeah.” I swat at Scootaloo’s shoulder. “I’ll grab’em, and we’ll meet up here tomorrow?” Scootaloo nods, and we both look over at Sweetie Belle who’s staring down at the fire and the dying embers. The poker is in her hand, buried in the meat of the largest log, and her eyes are glazed over as she watches it burn. “Sweetie?” She starts when I say her name, and looks up at me with wide eyes. “You okay?” Scootaloo sits up straighter. Sweetie Belle lets out a slow breath that carries a touch of mist even though she’s standing right over the flames. “I’m fine,” Sweetie says finally. “Just cold… uhm, I’ll go grab my stuff, then come back here, okay?” Scootaloo and I share a glance. “Like, right back here?” Scootaloo asks. “You’re not going to stay—” I elbow Scootaloo in the ribs and she shuts up. “Ah’ll meetcha back here, then,” I say. “Once Ah grab the masks.” “You don’t have to,” Sweetie says. “Gonna do it anyway,” I reply. Despite herself, she smiles at me, and that small, lonely expression reminds me of why I’m agreeing to all of this. Whether or not we’re willing to say it, and whether or not her family wants to admit it, Sweetie Belle is in danger. Real, serious danger. Neither of us know how to help her any other way than just being there for her, and if we’re apart for too long the Greys settle in, and I know that’s when Sweetie gets to her worst. I think part of why she does what she does to herself is to escape the constant dull nothingness of the Greys. Part of me wishes I could just get her medical help, but I know if anyone finds out what she’s doing they’ll take her away from the two of us. They don’t know about the Greys, and they probably can’t even tell that it happens because, I think, it comes from that ‘other’ place. Hell, maybe it’s just Sunset cursing us from beyond the grave. Guess that’d be fair enough. “Thank you,” Sweetie says softly. I shrug, and look over at Scootaloo who nods. “I’ll be here too,” she says. “But probably later.” “Sounds fine t’me,” I say. “Ready?” “Nope,” Scootaloo replies with a dry laugh. “But let’s go anyway.” Sweet Apple Acres ain’t what it used to be. Not that it ain’t still a big farm that supplies apples all over Canterlot, because it’s still that. No, what changed is the folks that keep the farm. Once upon a time, I guess we were a family. Me and Applejack and Big Mac and Granny Smith. Together, the four of us, plus some help from Applejack’s friends now and again and from seasonal hands when we could afford it, kept the place in good repair. More than that, though, we kept it a home. The place was always warm and welcoming. There was always a place at the table for a stranger who needed a bite to eat, or a friend who needed a place to stay for the night. Things changed when Sunset died. Everything changed when Sunset died. That’s when my world started to spin down the toilet, and take everything I loved with it. Not that I’m blaming Sunset, mind you. I’m not. I can’t really blame a dead girl for dying especially since I had a hand in the killing. No, I know whose fault it is because I have to look her in the eye every time I glance at a mirror. It was my bright idea. Whatever Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle say, it will always have been my idea. It’s late morning by the time I ride back into the familiar orchards of the acres. Thankfully, Applejack isn’t around. If she were, I’d probably have to waste a couple of hours getting another lecture about doing my chores from my big sister all while watching her visibly try not to beat the everloving bejeezus out of me. Applejack never did have the keenest grip on her temper, and she loses it more often than not around me. Fortunately, that mostly means yelling and throwing stuff rather than hitting me. For now, anyway. I glance around furtively as I bike past the farmhouse and turn towards the barn. The old mammoth structure has definitely seen better days, mostly because we just can’t afford to keep it up as well as we used to, but it’s still holding together well enough. I slip inside the barn and throw the kickstand on my bike before peeking out of the main doors. Still no sign of Applejack. She ain’t in town, I know that much for sure because the truck is still here, and if I’m really lucky she’s out in the north orchard mending that busted fence. It’s on the ass end of the property so she’d have just loaded up a wheelbarrow and rolled it out there so as not to make a bunch of trips back and forth. Grabbing my backpack, I make a run around the east side of the barn towards the cellar door, pull it open, and step inside. It’s dark and I keep it that way. Ever since I got back from the Trials my night vision has been as keen as anything. I can pick out the shapes of the steps and the whole of the cellar with barely an effort, and I move past the stored apples and cider barrels to the rear of the basement where the workbench is. I hate being down here. The musty smell and feeling of being underground reminds me too much of the basement in Sunset’s Trial. It reminds me too much of being on a hook. The skin just under my shoulder and over my heart itches and aches. There’s no scar there, where the pike of the butchers hook split through my skin to suspend me above the ground, but I can still feel the phantom pains of it. Ignoring the ache, I move to the workbench and kneel down to grab the small wood box I’d stashed our art projects in after Sweetie’s was broken. They’re covered and wrapped in a thick burlap cloth to keep dust and rats off. I don’t know why I wanted to keep them safe, because it’s not like I thought we’d ever use them at the time. Maybe it’s just because it’s something the three of us made together. Maybe that’s enough. I unwrap them one at a time to check them over and make sure they’re still in good shape. They’re all carved from good, solid wood, treated for water, and coated with primer, then painted a dull, wall-plaster white. The first one is mine, and the broad, crude, toothy smile I daubed onto it with my fingers grins at me underneath eyes that are just circles with notches carved down the middle of them that go straight through and serve as eyeholes. Next is Scootaloo’s mask which is almost identical to mine. That was kind of the point. The smile is the same, but the circular eyes have a center point that’s been hollowed out by a hand drill instead of notched vertically to provide vision. And last… I grimace as I pick up Sweetie Belle’s mask. When Applejack broke it, I wanted to be angry. Maybe I was angry somewhere deep beneath the Greys, but I just couldn’t reach it. Instead, after she broke it, I just went to the cellar and tried to put it back together. I knew there was no fixing it, but I tried anyway. Sweetie hadn’t even managed to paint the smile on yet, and she never would. It broke into three pieces when Applejack kicked it. Bad luck she managed to land her foot right in the middle of the darn thing before pitching it at me. I don’t know if it was the kick or the throw that broke it for good, and I guess it doesn’t matter, but it still makes me mad. I sanded the rough, broken edges of the three fragments so they’d fit together kind of like the pieces of a puzzle. I drilled small holes along the broken, sanded edges, then took some nails, pliers, and a spool of wire, and wrapped the heads nails in the wire before slotting them into the holes. Each nail was connected to another one across from it, and it was a little like stitching something together using metal. Once they were in, I twisted the nails so they’d pull together, one after the other, until the pieces of the broken mask fit tight. Then I turned it over and braced the mask against the desk to carefully flatten the point of each nail with a hammer until it rested flush against the wood. Once that was done, I gave it a metallic paint finish to make the nails blend in, and fixing it took me the better part of a night, but when I finished it was at least wearable. Not that it would matter for our class, but it was Sweetie Belle’s and fixing it was the best I could do. I lift the crudely wired-together mask out last, and turn it this and that, examining it for flaws or flexes in the wood, before setting it back down, satisfied that it was still intact. “Good morning.” The mask clatters out of my hand as I whip around, and for a moment I think I’m trapped in a nightmare. There’s something in the dark. Something with twisting arms like spider-legs and scorpion stingers. Something waiting to pull me apart and put me back together all wrong—ALL WRONG! They twist and chitter and snap, and… and… I blink away the terror-fueled vision as Twilight Sparkle steps closer, her silhouette resolving out of the nightmare darkness, and into reality. The lights are still out, but she doesn’t seem bothered by it, she’s just staring down at me with a faint smile. “Sorry,” she says softly. “Did I startle you?” All of the clothes Twilight is wearing are Applejack’s, from the thick sweater to the flannel button up, to the heavy jeans and boots. All of it is just a little too big on her, which actually manages to make it look endearing more than clumsy. “Ah’m fine,” I say quietly. My voice comes out dull and faded, and I grit my teeth as I can feel my senses starting to slip into the malaise of the Greys. “You didn’t come home last night,” Twilight says. I shrug as I turn and wrap the masks up in the burlap before Twilight can see them, and stick the whole mess of them into my backpack. “Just needed t’grab somethin’,” I say as I stand up and sling the strap of the backpack over my shoulder. “Ah’m takin’ off.” Twilight doesn’t move out of my way, instead she just eyes me for a long moment before glancing over my shoulder at the workbench, then back down at me. “We got a call yesterday that you weren’t in any of your afternoon classes,” Twilights says finally. “And I got another one this morning that you didn’t show up to your morning ones.” “Bet AJ’s livid, huh?” I say dully. “She was pretty mad last night,” Twilight agrees. “But… I didn’t tell her about this morning.” I raise an eyebrow at that. “Why?” “Because I think you probably have a good reason for skipping your classes,” Twilight says gently. “You’re a lot smarter than anyone seems to give you credit for, and I think if you’re skipping then it’s because you know what you’re doing.” Snorting derisively, I try to move past Twilight, but before I get past her she puts a hand out and sets it against my shoulder. The moment she touches me a cold jolt goes down my spine and, briefly, my ears are filled with that chittering noise again that turns my legs to lead and my bowels to jelly. Even though it makes no sense, I’m suddenly terrified of her. I don’t want to look up because part of me is absolutely sure I’m just going to see that twisting darkness. I force myself to do it anyway, and the moment I do the fear is gone. Twilight is staring down at me with worry on her face. “Are you okay?” Twilight asks. “I know your sister… and I know she’s angry, at you and herself, and at a lot of things, and I know I’m not really your family, but I still care about you, Bloom.” I let out a slow sigh, then take a deep breath and shrug again, but I don’t pull away from her. The Greys are settling in, dulling the pain along with everything else, but some part of her is breaking through it for whatever reason. Staving it off. “Ah’m just tryin’ t’take care’a mah friends,” I say. “And if AJ don’t like it, she can go sit on a fencepost’n spin.” Twilight laughs a little, to my surprise, and then nods. “I won’t tell her I saw you,” she says finally. “And I definitely won’t tell her you said that.” I stare down at her hand for a moment, then look back up at her. “Thanks.” “I’m on your side, Bloom,” she says as she lowers herself a little. “I promise, okay?” “You’d pretty much be the only one,” I reply with a dark chuckle. “That’s okay with me.” Maybe I misjudged Twilight. I always thought she was a little odd, especially with all the times she tried to ‘engage’ with me, and talk to me about stuff. I figured she was just trying to suck up to Applejack by being nice to her little sister, but the way she’s talking I think she might actually care. It’s… kind of nice. “I’ll try and smooth things over with the school,” Twilight says, smiling. “Take the day off, okay? Come back when you’re ready. I’ll be here, just take care of yourself.” Letting out a slow breath, I nod. “Thanks, Twi’,” I say. “Ah… Ah really do appreciate it.” “Take care of yourself,” she says as she straightens out. “Now, I’ve got to grab a few things for Jackie. She left some of her tools here and didn’t want to walk all the way back from the north fence to get them.” “Ah figured,” I reply. “And be careful.” I pause, then look back at her. She’s still standing in the dark, staring at me, and smiling. Maybe I’m just imagining it but the way she said that… Shaking my head, I turn away again to leave quickly so as not to catch the eye of Big Mac, just in case he was coming back from wherever he is on the property. Also just in case Applejack decided to say screw it and meet her girlfriend half way. Hopping on my bike, I knock the kickstand up and take off back to Ormond with the masks. I wonder if Twilight would’ve been so keen on me going my own way if she knew what I was planning to do later on? Probably not, and if this went south she’d probably kick herself for not turning me in to my sister. Not that it matters now. We’ve made our decisions. And In The TombsI’m the first one back to Ormond, which surprises me. Sweetie Belle lives a lot closer, out in Whitetail, and we all left at the same time, so she should have been back first. Scootaloo already said she’d be delayed, probably because her dad was going to shout her ear off about her playing hooky. If he tries to lock her up in her room again, we’ll just go and bust her out though. Her old man installed a window lock on the outside, but it’s a cheap one, and easy to pick. On another note, that’s how I learned that Sweetie Belle can pick locks. I haven’t asked her how or where she learned it and I’m not sure I’ve got the stones to do so in the future. With the afternoon crawling onward and still no sign of my friends, I try to fight off the encroaching Greys by busying myself with keeping Ormond from falling apart. The good news is that, with all the construction equipment, abandoned tools, and old materials, better than half the stuff is still useable. I block up a few more windows with thick wooden planks to keep the worst of the wind and snow out, and slather on a coat of tar on each before spraying it down with a fixative to keep the stuff from peeling too bad in the weather. I chop some more wood too, refilling the lumber box after reaching down deep and dragging out the oldest stuff. I throw the old logs into the firepit along with kindling, and get to work starting the fire. The early evening has fallen and darkness spilled across the mountain by the time I hear someone else enter the lodge of Mount Ormond. I’d recognise those quiet footsteps anywhere. “Hey.” I look up from the merrily burning fire at Sweetie Belle, who’s stepping gingerly through the old halls and into the main den of the lodge where we dragged the mattresses. “Hey,” I say softly. “Thought y’all were comin’ right back.” “I got caught up.” Sweetie’s reply is hollow, but I’m not sure if it’s because of the Greys or if she’s trying to hide something. My bet is the latter. I take a deep breath and with the smell of campfire ash and snow comes the gentle scent of Sweetie Belle’s shampoo, her lip balm, and beneath that is the smell of antiseptic spray, rubbing alcohol, the course fibrous smell of new bandages, and under all of that is the familiar copper smell of— “—blood.” Sweetie doesn’t move or recoil, she just looks at me with those empty eyes that are still full of the Greys from being apart for a whole day “C’mere.” I nod towards myself and hold out my hands, palms up. She puts her hands in mine, her left in my right, her right in my left, and I run my thumbs over her knuckles before turning them over. “I can’t help it,” Sweetie says quietly. “It hurts. Even when everything is still grey at least it still hurts. It makes the world stop shaking, and it makes the Fog go away.” I let go of her hands, put an arm over her shoulder, and I walk her over to the mattress where we sit down. Sweetie shrugs off her jacket, despite the cold, and rolls up the sleeves of her hoodie to show arms wrapped in fresh bandages. The small stains on the linen are still faintly red, and I count five, six, seven… eight stains. Small and red. My throat is like a vice that’s been cranked shut and it’s choking me from the inside. It’s worse because there’s nothing I can say that I ain’t already said. No matter how much I want her to stop, no matter how much Scootaloo wants her to stop, she doesn’t. She says she can’t and maybe that’s true. I don’t know, and I don’t understand, all I know is that she’s hurting, and all she does is trade one kind of hurt for another that’s easier to deal with. Maybe that just makes Sweetie the smart one. “Sorry,” she whispers. “Why?” I ask through my closing throat. “Ain’t yer fault… Ah’m the one who can’t help ya.” “Not everything is your fault, Bloom,” Sweetie says, finally looking up at me. Her eyes are so green. It’s like looking at sunshine coming through the leaves of an apple tree in the spring. “Does it hurt?” Sweetie shrugs. “I guess so?” She says quietly. “But everything hurts, so it’s more like letting something go after holding on too long. Like when you’re playing tug-of-war and you’re pulling so hard that the rope is cutting your skin, but you don’t feel it until you let go and the air hits it, and then it’s over and it’s… it’s a relief.” Rather than answer, I reach out and put both hands over her bandaged left arm, and run my palm along the rough linen until I find the little butterfly pin that keeps it in place. Carefully, I undo the pin, and for a moment I think Sweetie is going to stop me, but she doesn’t. She just waits and watches. It’s like unwrapping a Christmas present. That’s the completely absurd and idiotic thought that passes through my head as I slowly unwind the bandage from around her arm. When I get down to the skin it sticks to the bloody patches of the wounds. I pull at cloth cautiously, trying to be careful not to tear any scabs, until finally the stained roll of bandages falls freely to the mattress. Her skin is pale as Granny’s good porcelain, but now there are ridges like chips and notches on tea cups covering her arm. Those are just the healed ones though. The open wounds are ragged and wicked, like she’d used some kind of dull piece of scrap metal instead of a knife. The worst part is I can see the flesh knitting and the wound closing with unnatural speed. “They close so fast now,” Sweetie says shakily as she looks down at her arm with me. “My skin doesn’t feel real. It’s like trying to c-cut through soft wood, and when I do, it just seals up unless it’s deep and ragged and… and even then it closes so quickly.” “Somethin’ changed us when we went to that place,” I say as I lay a hand over the wound nearest to her wrist. Her skin is warm, and the blood is warmer. “Ain’t sure what, but it twisted us all up on the inside.” Sweetie Belle starts to shake as I hold on to her hand. The Greys are going away, and the feeling of being alive is flooding back in. The hate, the shame, the guilt, and all the grief is flooding back in like water into a reservoir. “P-Please stop looking,” Sweetie begs through wet sobs. “P-Please… I’m… I know it’s d-disgusting and u-ugly a-and—” I bring her damaged arm up and kiss the palm of her hand. “Ain’t ugly,” I mumble against her fingers. “Y’all ain’t even halfway t’ugly… yer the most beautiful girl in the whole world, Sweetie. Always have been.” She doesn’t reply. She just hangs her head and cries quietly. We stay like that for a little while, and while she cries I pull out the first aid box I took from the kitchen and crack it open. I take out some of the bactine spray, and a new roll of bandages, and wrap up Sweetie’s arm. Then I move to her right arm, which ain’t no less of a mess than her left, and carefully replace the bandages there too. If that’s all I can do anymore, then I’ll do it. When Scootaloo finally shows up, it’s past eight at night, and she looks awful. Her head is hung low and covered by her hood, and her hands are shoved in the front pockets as she walks over to where Sweetie and I had settled in on the mattress by the fire-pit with me sitting behind her and my arms wrapped around her middle, and her head resting sleepily against my shoulder. “Hey,” I call out quietly, trying not to disturb Sweetie. “Sorry I’m late,” Scootaloo answers. The words come out rough and raw, and I frown at the sound as she drops down on the mattress beside us, sidles closer and lays her head on my shoulder. “You okay?” She shakes her head silently. “Yeah, me neither.” We watch the flames for a while, maybe an hour, before Scootaloo finally speaks up. “My parents are getting a divorce.” I turn my head slowly to stare at Scootaloo, and even Sweetie Belle snaps out of her grim malaise to look worriedly over at our friend. I swallow thickly and look between Sweetie and Scootaloo a few times before settling back on Scootaloo. “W—What?” Scootaloo sniffles and moves a little closer to us, and Sweetie Belle moves around to wrap her arms around Scootaloo’s middle while I put my arms around both of them until we’re surrounding our crying friend. “Dad f-fucking snapped tonight,” Scootaloo sobs, and her words come out thick and clumsy. “We were having d-dinner, and Mom was doing that thing where she’s acting like everything is fine and shit, and he just snaps and starts screaming at Mom and me, about how I’m a m-murderer and how he can’t show his face anywhere. Then M-Mom started screaming back, and then he h-hit her, and I yelled at him and—” She looks up at me and my heart lodges in my throat. Her face is a mess of bruises, and her nose is bent wrong, there’s dried blood dripping over a split lip, and her right eye is almost swollen shut. “Here, lay down,” Sweetie says gently as she pulls Scootaloo away from me and nudges her down to the mattress. There isn’t much resistance left in Scootaloo, so she lets Sweetie lay her back and pull her hood away. Sweetie doesn’t flinch at the mess Scootaloo’s face is in, she just reaches over the edge of the mattress and picks up the first aid kit from where I left it, and cracks it open. Cotton swabs clenched in a pair of tweezers and dabbed with rubbing alcohol go first to wipe up the blood and mucus around her face, cleaning up Scootaloo’s nose, lips, and the space around her eyes. Sweetie Belle’s hands are careful and precise, just like her sister’s, and once that’s done she pulls out a box of small white adhesive strips to put on the cuts on her lip, the ones over and under her eyes, and all the while she whispers soft, calming words. All I can do is just cradle Scootaloo while Sweetie Belle works. I lay down beside her and wrap her in my arms and wait out the pain, all the while knowing we have no choice now. “Deep breath, Scoots,” Sweetie says as she braces Scootaloo’s nose with her finger and thumb. “On three… one, tw—” CRACK “MOTHERFUCKER!” Scootaloo snarls as she jerks in my arms, and I tighten my grip to keep her from spasming out of Sweetie’s hands. “Sorry,” Sweetie says with a brittle chuckle. “It uhm… it’s supposed to hurt less if you’re not expecting it.” Using a roll of cotton and some tape from the kit, Sweetie fashions a makeshift brace for Scootaloo’s nose, wipes up the blood one more time, then pulls back. “There,” she says softly. “That’s not so bad.” Scootaloo sits up and gently lays a hand over her nose. Her eyes are hollow and miserable as she loudly clears her throat, snorts, and hocks a massive, bloody loogie into the shadows past the fire-pit. “Gross.” I say, trying for a laugh as I sit up with her. “I think he was really trying to kill me,” Scootaloo says grimly, and Sweetie and I share a worried look. “Like, if it weren’t for whatever happened to us between here and Sunset’s crazy fucking Trial that made us tougher, I really think Dad woulda killed me.” “That’s… that ain’t right, is it?” I ask cautiously. “Ah mean, he… he wouldn’t’a just…” Scootaloo shakes her head. “You didn’t see him, Bloom,” she says shakily. “The look in his eyes… he was really gonna kill me. If I hadn’t gotten outta there, he would’ve just beat me to death. My own dad hates me.” “Rarity and my parents hate me too,” Sweetie says quietly. “Or maybe… I don’t know… it’s like they pretend I don’t exist.” “Ah wish AJ would pretend Ah don’t exist,” I grumble, then I relax a little as I remember this morning. “But… but Twilight ain’t so bad. Treats me okay, Ah guess. Suppose Ah’m the lucky one.” Not that it matters. I’m glad Twilight is a good person. I’m glad that she’s with Applejack and that she’s maybe helping my sister through all this shit because that’s the thing; Applejack may hate me, but I don’t hate her. She’s right to hate me. I’m the one who fucked up and made life miserable for everyone. If anyone’s gonna be hated then it oughta be me. So yeah, I’m glad that Twilight’s around, but that don’t mean I’m going to be sticking around. Especially not with Scootaloo this way. “Well, if we weren’t certain ‘fore this then we are now, huh?” I say as I reach back and grab my backpack, pull it up, and unzip it. “I ain’t lettin’ your dad take you anywhere, no way, no how, and yer mom’ll probably wanna skip town.” “Pff, over my dead body,” Scootaloo grumbles. “I’m not leaving you girls… ever.” “Same here,” Sweetie says firmly. “So… guess we’re doing this?” I reach into the backpack and pull out the burlap-wrapped masks. I pull the thick, rough cloth away to reveal the first one, mine, and pick it up. Scootaloo takes hers and turns it over in her hands, then smiles at the unsettling grin on it. Sweetie smiles too at the rough, shattered mess of her mask, and picks it up. She’s careful at first, then gives it a few test tugs and pulls before looking up at me with a grin brighter than I’ve seen in weeks. Bright enough that I smile back at her. “I love it,” she says happily. She fits it over her face and then lets go, and it settles easily. I can see her bright, leaf-green eyes through the cracks I’d widened just enough to allow them to serve as eyeholes without compromising the integrity. “Am I still beautiful?” Sweetie asks, her voice sounding strange through the mask. Frantic… almost breathless. “Prettiest girl in the world,” I say weakly, and Scootaloo gives me a wry grin before nudging me with her foot. I respond with an elbow to her ribs and she laughs as she fits her own mask, and I put on mine. As one, we reach back and pull our hoods over our heads, with Sweetie and I tucking our hair back behind our collars. “So…” Scootaloo says through her vicious, painted grin. “Where to?” It takes us two more nights to find a good spot for our first try. The outer roads to Canterlot stretch out into the distance a long ways to the east, the west, and the south. There’s another road, though, on the other side of the mountain, carving up north, that not many people use, and up that road is a small convenience store and gas stop. It’s the last little bit of civilization you see before you get into the main mountain passes where it’s all woods and wilderness and deep, dark snow. The three of us come out of the woods from behind the place, hoods up and masks down. Of the three of us, Scootaloo is the quickest and the sharpest. She spent the last day and night watching the place from the trees. Memorizing the patterns. There are only three employees. Two in the day, and one at night. I’m pretty sure that’s some kinda violation. I remember someone once telling me you’re always supposed to have two folks working a gas stop at night. Y’know… in case it gets robbed. But I guess some people just don’t wanna pay that extra person, huh? Lucky me and lucky us. Unlucky them. “In and out,” I say as we move around the side of the building in the dark. “Ah ain’t stickin’ around for someone to swing by for gas on their way through the mountains.” “Two minutes, maybe three,” Scootaloo says quietly. “We get in, crack open the register, take the cash, and take off.” “What about the attendant?” I ask. “I’ll take care of it,” Sweetie says softly. Scootaloo and I both look over at her. Her expression is that same odd, hollow look as we crouch down in the snow near the lone dumpster along the side of the gas stop. “Okay,” I say quietly. “Weapons?” I reach into my jacket and tighten my hand around the grip of the hunting knife I’d tied under my arm and pull it free with an oiled whisper. Scootaloo draws out her keyhole saw from her pocket and nods. We both look over at Sweetie Belle, who— “What the fuck is that?” Scootaloo blurts. I don’t say anything but I can’t help but quietly agree with the sentiment. Sweetie Belle isn’t gripping a weapon so much as it is some kind of torture implement, and it takes me a second to recognise what it even is. It’s an old metal school ruler. The bottom third is wrapped in duct tape where she’s gripping it, while the top quarter has been carved at and sharpened into something like a stake. There are a half-dozen or more heavy sewing needles taped to it that stick out at odd angles that would prick, rip, and tear at any skin it touches if you were to actually cut someone with the thing. My stomach lurches as I realise the tip of the tool is already stained faintly rust-brown, and as I glance at Scootaloo I see her come to the same conclusion that I just did. “Hey, uh… S-Sweetie, is tha—urk!” I cut Scootaloo off with an elbow to the gut and shoot her a glare. She gives me a silent, apologetic grimace before shaking her head and looking back up at Sweetie Belle. “Okay, smash and grab?” Scootaloo asks. “Smash and grab,” I repeat, and Sweetie nods. Masked, gloved, and silent, the three of us pull our hoods up as we stand and walk around the corner to the front of the shop. My heart is my throat and my stomach is in knots. The sweat on my palms is making my grip slick on my knife, and I keep having to wipe my hands on my jacket. “Three,” I say as we reach the door. “Two,” Scootaloo chimes in as she shoves it open, prompting the jingle of the brass bell atop the door. “One.” Sweetie Belle bolts past both of us as she hisses the word out. She moves in a flash of violent motion and the attendant barely has time to look up with a sleepy, rote greeting dying on his tongue as his eyes go wide for a brief second at the sight of Sweetie’s shattered mask before she vaults the counter and plants two booted feet in the poor guy’s gut. The air leaves him in a soundless wheeze as Sweetie bears him to the ground, slamming him against the floor and putting the tip of her weapon to his throat. “Hi~” The voice that comes out from under her mask sounds only superficially like the girl who makes my heart beat faster, and it sends a chill up my spine. “Shit, S—” Scootaloo clamps her mouth shut before she blurts out Sweetie’s name, and amends herself—“Fucking relax!” I keep my mouth shut as I vault the counter too and land, jam my knife into the space between the till and the cash drawer, and jerk hard. Something snaps inside the machine and it pops open with a tinny clang. I don’t bother to count the cash inside, I just grab everything. Scootaloo sweeps around and opens a small bag and in go rolled up clumps of bills, fistfuls of change, and someone’s credit card they probably left in the gas reader. I lift the drawer and grab a few more stray bills, toss them into the bag, then drop it and vault back over the counter. “C’mon! Let’s go!” Scootaloo snaps at Sweetie before bolting out the door with the cash. I turn back to Sweetie, and she looks up, giggles, then looks back down at the terrified attendant before leaning in close. “Sshh,” Sweetie coos. “Or I’ll cut you.” He yelps as she pricks his cheek, then she grabs him by the forehead and slams the back of his head into the ground hard, before scrambling to her feet and hurtling over the counter to barrel out the door. I spare a glance for the stunned attendant, cuss under my breath, then bolt for the outside. Sweetie Belle is right behind me and she’s laughing. I haven’t heard her laugh like this since before Anon-A-Miss and the Trials, and as weird as she was acting in the gas stop, the sound of her laughter? Entirely worth it. We sprint into the woods, up through the foothills that wind and climb through the mountains. Even if they went looking for us here right away, rather than along the road like a sane person, they’d never find us. It’s winter in Canterlot and the snow comes down like god dumped it clean out of a trough. Within hours our tracks will be covered. In a day it’ll be like were never here. All three of us are laughing over an hour later as we stumble into the grounds of Ormond, red-faced, sweaty, and high on adrenaline. I’m so warm right now I don’t even need a fire, but we grab a few logs on our way into the main lodge anyway. “That was nuts!” Scootaloo groans as she slumps onto the mattress still clutching the bag of cash. “We actually did it!” “Mah sister’s gonna kill me,” I mutter as I drop down to sit beside her. Sweetie just sidles in silently against me and rests her head on my shoulder as I reach up to pry the mask off my face. I gasp at the shock of cold air that hits my lungs. I hadn’t realised how hard I’d been breathing til now, and the mask was good, but it weren’t exactly made for common usage. “Only if we get caught,” Scootaloo says as she sits up and pops her own mask off. “And we’ll only get caught if we get stupid… speaking which, hey Sweetie? What the hell was that?” She doesn’t answer right away. Instead she turns to face Scootaloo and cocks her head quizzically. Her face is still hidden behind her shattered and unsettling mask. “What do you mean?” Her voice comes out slightly tinny. Frantic, almost. “That poor attendant,” I say, gesturing back towards the forest we came from. “Poor fella’s just workin’ his nine-ta-five, y’all didn’t have to body’im like that.” Sweetie draws back a little, then shrugs. “I didn’t really hurt him,” she says, giggling. The noise sounds weirdly distorted and hollow coming from under the mask, and on an impulse I snap out a hand and yank the mask off of her face. I get a brief glimpse of Sweetie’s expression going slack with shock, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks, and the blood draining from her features, before her whole face contorts in rage and she lets out a high, raw shriek. “MINE!” Sweetie lunges at me, and at the mask, with her fingers curled into rabid claws, and she hits me like a bronco, carrying me straight off the mattress and down onto the cold stone floor of Ormond Lodge as she straddles me with her fingers wrapped around me neck. “GIVE IT BACK!” Her voice cracks and breaks as she screams. The mask isn’t even in my hands anymore, it’s tumbled out of numb fingers as I grasp and scrabble at Sweetie’s hands. She’s so insanely strong. Her grip is completely solid; no amount of prying at her fingers gives me purchase, and my vision starts to narrow to a dark tunnel. “GIVE IT—hurk!” Her weight vanishes from me and I gasp for air, dragging gulps of it down my abused throat as I massage my neck and sit up, coughing and hacking for all I’m worth. “What the FUCK, Sweetie?!” Scootaloo snarls as she drags Sweetie Belle backward. She has Sweetie in a standing rear triangle choke, like something out of one of those MMA fights Mac watches. Sweetie is kicking and thrashing like a mad horse, but only for a moment. Slowly, the fight drains out of her, until finally she’s hanging slack in Scootaloo’s grip and making small wheezing noises. “Let’er go, Scoots!” I snap as I stand on shaky legs. My vision swims as Scootaloo gives me a look like I’ve lost my mind, but I fix her with a good glare. “Scoots.” My voice rumbles low as I advance on them. “Ah said y’all let’er go!” She grimaces, but nods as she releases her hold, and Sweetie topples down onto the mattress coughing, and a moment later she’s curling up in a ball and sobbing. “Bloom…” Scootaloo starts. “Ah don’t wanna hear it,” I say, shaking my head as I walk over to Sweetie and sit down beside her before wrapping my arms around her. “We’re talking about this,” Scootaloo says. I don’t argue. Ain’t no point in it. When Scootaloo gets a bug up her ass about something she ain’t the type to let it go, and frankly, I don’t think she’ll be happy til we do talk about this. She’s probably right anyhow. “I’m sorry,” Sweetie sobs. “I’m sorry I… I don’t know what happened!” “S’okay, Ah ain’t mad,” I say quietly. That said, I don’t think I can say the same of Scootaloo. From the look on her face I can’t tell if she’s mad or just scared. Little bit of both is probably right, and in fairness I don’t think either of us have ever seen Sweetie freak out like that before. Scootaloo kneels after a moment and puts a hand on Sweetie’s shoulder while looking at me cautiously. I mouth the word ‘later’ at her, and she grimaces, but nods. I don’t know why these two still trust me after all the crap I’ve gotten them into but they do. Best I can do now is look after them, for whatever good that does. So I hold onto Sweetie Belle while she cries herself out. If anything, it seems like she’s more scared than either of us of what happened. She crashes an hour later, and I have to extract myself from her grip to lay her down on the mattress before tossing a couple of the blankets over her. My joints pop as I stretch to get the blood flowing again. Even despite the fire I know that it’s freezing out, but the cold still doesn’t touch me, and I nod to Scootaloo as I walk past her. She’s up and following me a moment later, her eyes settle right on the back of my neck as we walk out into the icy grounds of Ormond. Snow is thick on the ground, and more is falling in heavy clumps as we find a clear spot beneath and awning and sit down. Scootaloo reaches into her pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes, still wrapped in plastic, and I frown. “When’d y’all start smokin’?” She doesn’t answer. She just peels the plastic off the pack, pops the top, pulls away the aluminium wrapping, and nudges out one of the sticks before taking between her lips. Scootaloo stuffs the pack back into her front hoodie pocket, and when her hand comes back out it’s holding a cheap plastic lighter that she flicks a few times before lighting the cigarette. The moment Scootaloo takes a breath she starts hacking and coughing, then she spits, breathes in, and does it again. “Five”—cough, cough—“seconds ago.” She hacks the words out like a bad lung, before settling in and puffing on the cigarette a little more sedately, coughing every so often between drags. “We ain’t eighteen,” I say. “We just robbed a bodega.” I don’t really have an argument for that one, so I let it lie. Instead, I settle in beside her and stare up at the snow-shrouded night sky and track the drifting snow. “How much we make?” Scootaloo shrugs, then tucks the cigarette back between her lips before pulling out a bundle of cash from her hoodie pocket. She passes the roll of bills to me. “It’s like, three hundred and some.” The roll is bound with a thick blue rubber band that I pull off. The bills are all different ages, some are new, but most are heavily worn and wrinkled, and I smooth them out as I count. Scoots hadn’t bothered to sort them so it takes me a bit, but eventually I roll them back up and rubberband them again. “Three hundred’n forty-seven bucks,” I say quietly. “Plus whatever loose change y’all got left.” “Couple rolls of quarters,” Scootaloo replies. “Nowhere near enough t’get outta here,” I say. “Nope.” “Guess we gotta do it again, huh?” I say. Scootaloo looks over at me, her eyes flashing strangely in the dark and her face lit only by the ember of her stolen cigarette as it slowly works its way closer to the filter. We’ve been friends long enough that I don’t need to ask her what she’s thinking. I can see written plain as day over her bruised eyes and cheeks. How did we end up here? How did it come to this? The answer to that one is easy: me. “As many times as it takes, huh?” “Yeah.” I nod as I tuck away the money. “As many as it takes.” What Is Thy NameOver the course of the next month, we get better and better at hitting places. They’re all gas stations or bodegas—same as the first—around the city outskirts of Canterlot. We kept it random after our first hit, Sweetie pointed out that we couldn’t hit places around Ormond too often otherwise the cops would get suspicious. Even if most of the city forgot the old almost-resort existed, someone somewhere is gonna put two and two together and remember there’s a place way up in the mountains where some enterprising bandits might be holing up. The takes were always crap though. A few hundred dollars each, and we burned through some of that keeping Scootaloo safe since she couldn’t go back home. Sweetie and I took turns buying food and ferrying it up to the lodge but we couldn’t bring her anything too perishable on account of not having electricity. “I’m telling you guys, I’m fine,” Scootaloo says grimly as we settle in around the fire. “Liar,” I say and I don’t have the energy to make it sound playful. “This shit ain’t workin’.” Scootaloo scowls at me but she doesn’t argue the point since we all know it’s true, and grudgingly takes a bowl of soup Sweetie warmed over the fire pit and tucks into it. I take one too and start eating. It’s slow and mechanical, lately all food tastes like ashes even when we’re all together, but a body’s gotta eat, so we all trudge through it. “We… We could hit a bigger place,” Sweetie says quietly before taking a bite. I look up at her, then over to Scootaloo, and to my surprise, I don’t see any fight on her face over the subject. Maybe that’s because we all knew it had to happen eventually. The little places we’ve been knocking over for the past month were easy but weren’t what you’d call lucrative, and on the last one we’d only barely made it away from before the cops showed up. Weren’t worth the couple hundred we got out of it, frankly speaking. Sweetie takes her spot beside and between the two of us, her mask cradled in her hands. “We could do it,” she says gently. She’s right. We probably could. It’d be riskier than anything else we’ve done, but we could do it. Whether we get away clean or not is the big question. Up to this point, we’ve been managing with scaring the daylights out of the clerks at the various bodegas and such we’ve been hitting, but it only works out because they’re usually alone and isolated. In short, we ain’t had to hurt anyone too bad… a couple of bruises here and there, but nothing worse than a bloody nose. A bigger target with more cash on hand, though? That’s gonna be in the city proper, and that means we could run into any number of problems, and honestly… Honestly, I don’t know if I trust Sweetie to hold it together that long. But the worst of it is that that’s the same reason I’m really considering it. “Where’d ya have in mind?” I ask around a mouthful of cheap beef stew. Sweetie looks up at the both of us with an odd gleam in her eyes, and her hands tighten around her mask like she’s itching to put it on. “The Crystal Emporium.” Beef stew splatters against my face. “Aw c’mon, Scoots!” I groan, as I wipe away bits of food. “ARE YOU INSANE?!” Scootaloo gawps at Sweetie Belle, her lips still stained with brown broth from her spit-take. “The Emporium?!” “W-Well, not the whole thing,” Sweetie replies, shifting awkwardly on the mattress. “But… the mall security is pretty lazy, and the employees all break the security rules all the time by propping rear doors open when they go out to smoke and stuff.” “And it’s in the middle of Canterlot!” Scootaloo puts her bowl down and gives Sweetie Belle a hard look, but I speak up before she has a chance to continue. “Sweetie’s right,” I say softly, my mind doing cartwheels as I mull of her proposition. “Ah mean, y’all ain’t wrong either, Scoots,” I say before she can argue, “but Sweetie’s got a point. The mall ain’t exactly aces when it comes to security, and with how fast we are it’d be pretty easy to get in or out… once.” It is crazy, but it’s also viable which scares me. “No,” Scootaloo says sharply, slashing the air with her hand. “No way are we actually considering this, right? Bust open the Crystal Emporium and rob… what?” “Diamond Imports.” Now it’s both our turns to stare slack-jawed at Sweetie’s instant answer. Diamond Imports. The high-end jewelry store is on the upper level along with all the fancy-schmancy clothing boutiques that Rarity is always going gaga over, so I’ve seen it plenty of times. It’s huge, and moreover it’s owned by one ‘Filthy Rich’, something that Diamond Tiara never shuts up about. It’s why her family has so much money. Of course, making money in a place as ‘crude’ as a public mall ain’t exactly classy enough for this town’s elite, which I guess is why she ain’t going to Crystal Prep. If she did, she’d be miserable because she might actually be poorer than everyone else. As it is, she’s easily the richest girl at CHS, and she and her little clique of stuck-up snobs have spent the last year making our lives a living hell like it’s their job. All danger aside, the concept of smashing into her dad’s shop and robbing her blind definitely tickles my fancy. “That’s nuts,” Scootaloo says flatly. “Imports has gotta be one of the best protected stores in the mall.” I shrug at that. “Not like their security can be all that different from any’a the department stores,” I say. “Ain’t like they own the building or anythin’.” “Are you serious?!” Scootaloo meets my eyes but I don’t back down. “We could hit any place in the mall and make bank if that’s our plan, but… look I don’t like that snobby little prig anymore than you girls, but this is crazy.” “Nowhere else has that kind of cash,” Sweetie says. “They buy and sell, remember? That means they’ve got to have cash on hand, and lots of it.” Both of us stare at Sweetie again but this time for a more positive reason. “That’s… actually true,” Scootaloo admits cautiously. “Yeah,” I say, chewing it over along with stew. “That’s right, even jewelry aside, if we get into their cash… but you think they keep it in a safe?” “They do.” I look up at Sweetie and Scootaloo follows me. More and more this is starting to put a tickle down my spine in a way I ain’t fond of. “Sweetie…” I start. “Have you been casin’ Imports?” She doesn’t look up from her mask. Sweetie Belle makes a small, thoughtful hum, then nods wordlessly. I shouldn’t be surprised. Sweetie is sharp as a tack. Way smarter than me, as if that needed to be said, so if she’d already cased the shop and was putting her idea in the hat, then that meant… “You got a plan?” She nods. “Tuesday’s they have the smallest number of people working,” Sweetie says, turning her mask over and over in her hands as she speaks. “Most nights they have four closers, but Tuesday they only have three.” “Makes sense,” Scootaloo says. “Middle of the week is always the slowest time at the mall, so I guess ol’ Rich is trying to save on payroll.” “And it’ll cost’im,” I reply as a faint smile finds its way onto my face. Sweetie nods, her lips curving up slightly as she looks up hopefully at the pair of us. Most likely, she hadn’t expected us to really go in for it, but the more I heard the more I thought we might actually be able to pull this off. We’re faster and stronger than most people, regardless of our size. We can run for hours, heal crazy quick, and don’t need light to see—or at least not much—so we don’t have to bring in anything but what we need to get in and out. “One closer always leaves a little early,” Sweetie continues, “because they take out the trash and recycling to the dumpsters.” “What about the other two?” I ask. Sweetie Belle pauses in fidgeting with her mask and looks up at us. “They come out about twenty minutes later or so… but if we’re fast, we can get into the halls and hide there, wait for the others to come out, and then jump them.” Silence settles over the three of us at Sweetie’s last two words, and I have to rewind my brain a little to go over what I just heard. “We… what?” I say. I’m positive I didn’t hear that right. “You’re joking, right?” Scootaloo asks with a brittle laugh. Sweetie shakes her head, if anything she looks confused as to why we don’t understand, and it hits me just as she starts speaking again. “We need the closer’s keys,” Sweetie says. “Otherwise we won’t be able to get into the back lockup, and we need the code to get into the safe.” The notion puts an ice cube into my stomach, but at the same time I can’t really argue with Sweetie’s logic. Even if we get into the place we won’t be able to get any of the money or jewelry unless we can get to it, and even if we’re stronger than normal people, we’re not ‘break through a steel door’ strong. “Shit.” Scootaloo sums up my feelings on the matter pretty succinctly, and I nod, but I don’t argue the point with Sweetie either because she’s right. If we are going to hit Diamond Imports, then we need to get the keys and the code. “If we jump them,” I start, trying to parse out the rest of the plan, “what’s to stop’em from lyin’ about the code?” “Nothing,” Sweetie replies. “That’s why we take them with us and leave them in the back. They’ll be fine, the opener has keys too, so they’ll only be there overnight.” Well, I hate that idea, but I don’t see a better option. “This is nuts,” Scootaloo says as she stares down at her bowl. “But it’ll work,” I say. Scootaloo cusses under her breath, shakes her head, and tosses her bowl onto the mattress, then stands up sharply and storms out of the lodge and into the snow. Sweetie starts to stand but I put a hand out, catching her shoulder and pushing her back. “Don’t,” I say. “Ah’ll talk to’er a’right? Y’all ain’t done nothin’ wrong, she’s just sore ‘bout this whole thing.” “I don’t want us to fight,” Sweetie says weakly. “I just… I just want to be with you two forever, okay?” “Ah know,” I say. I lean in and pull her into a hug, and she wraps her arms around me and clings to me tightly. It’s a good feeling, but not all the way. There’s a poison between all of us now thanks to me, and it’s all we can do some days to cling to each other despite it. “I love you girls,” Sweetie sobs softly against the shoulder of my jacket. “Ah love ya too, Sweets,” I reply. Standing up from the mattress, I turn to track Scootaloo out of the main lodge. It’s not hard. The snow falls perpetually up on Mount Ormond so her tracks are plain as day to see. I follow her through the ruined wooden partitions and around the little outcroppings of rock until I reach a small hill, where a tall, unpowered stand of floodlights rises up, the metal rusted and the bulbs long-since burnt out. Scootaloo is sitting at the base of the floodlights and staring out over the forest. “Hey.” She turns to regard me for a moment, then turns back to the forest without saying a word, so I join her, sitting down in the snow beside her. It’s funny. It’s gotta be freezing out here, but I don’t even feel it. “You alright?” Scootaloo chuckles darkly, then shakes her head. “Are you?” She asks. “We’re talking about kidnapping someone.” “Only a little bit,” I say weakly. “S’not like we’re aimin’ to hurt’em or anythin’.” At least I hope not. I don’t plan to but at the same time, I have no idea how this is going to go down. Ain’t like I’ve ever done anything like this before, so I’m basically making it up as I go. “You really think they’re gonna just tell us the code?” Scootaloo asks. I shrug. “Ain’t like they got any stake in it. Ah figure all we gotta do is put a big enough scare in’em and they’ll talk, then we get the money and get out.” Rather than answer, Scootaloo just snorts and narrows her eyes at the fading treeline. It’s getting dark and soon the shadows will swallow up the forest, but that sort of thing doesn’t matter to us three. Not anymore anyway. “Something’s wrong with us,” Scootaloo says finally. “Yeah, Ah know,” I say softly. “S’why we gotta do this…” “It’s those fuckin’ masks, Bloom,” Scootaloo says, turning to look at me with a deep scowl. “They’re doing something to Sweetie! And to all of us! We’re going crazy and you know it!” “Ain’t the masks,” I reply quietly, and Scootaloo clams up. She doesn’t argue though. Sweetie may go berserk under the mask but I lose it too and I ain’t got no excuse like that. In fact, the only who ain’t losing her head regular-like is Scootaloo for whatever reason. Maybe because she’s the more grounded of us? I can’t say one way or the other, all I know is that Sweetie ain’t fallin’ off the cliff alone. She’s pitching down faster than either of us, sure, but I’m on my way down too, and I figure if Sweetie’s going down, and I’m going down, then eventually Scootaloo is going to take that same plunge too if she ain’t already. Just a matter of time, then, before we hit rock bottom. “We gotta get out of this place, Scoots,” I say hollowly. “It’s killin’ us… maybe not dead-like, but it’s takin’ something out of us that we need, just like when—” “—Don’t fuckin’ say it,” Scootaloo snarls. I don’t. That’s alright though. I didn’t really want to say it. It’s the one thing none of us talk about: what happened after we got put up on the butcher’s hooks in Sunset’s Trial. We don’t talk about what happened in the dark when that thing got its claws on us. We don’t talk about the way it took us apart and peeled things out of us. Now I’m shivering, but ain’t got nothing to do with the cold. “We gotta get outta here,” I repeat. “And if this goes off… we could get out right after.” “And if it goes wrong?” I smile wanly at that. She says it like every ain’t already gone about as wrong as it can go. Our families hate us. Sweetie is tearing herself apart. Scootaloo’s dad tried to put her in the ground. I don’t say any of that either though. Guess now is as good a time as any to learn to keep my dang mouth shut. It’s a shame it took ruining so many lives to teach me how to do it. “Then we try again,” I say. “And again and again, til all three’a us can walk outta this city together.” Scootaloo reaches into her jacket and draws out the mask with its painted rictus grin and daubed eyes, and stares down at it. She runs her hand over the smooth surface, and her face hardens a touch before she finally looks back up at me. “No matter the cost?” I give as good of a smile as I can, and ain’t it just a pathetic looking thing? “Ayup.” “Ah got eyes on’er.” I look back at Scootaloo who’s crouching behind me by the dumpster and nod at the corner. The one coming out is a girl about my sister’s age toting a couple of bags of garbage and some broken-down cardboard boxes. She’s got short, fashionably cut hair, a perfect pale green complexion, and is dressed to the nines in exactly the kind of blouse-and-skirt outfit you’d expect a young pretty thing to be wearing at work in a jewelry shop. Scootaloo nods and pulls her hood over her head, and I do the same. She props open the door with one of the garbage bags, which I happen to know you ain’t supposed to do, but everyone does it anyway. Otherwise, you’d need two people to ferry out a few bags of trash and ain’t no one got that kinda time. She grabs two bags and walks over to the trash compactors, and the moments she tosses them in, Scoots and I bolt for the door. What little sound we make is covered by the crash of trash as garbage-girl throws the bags into the maw of the compactor, and between that and our speed, it buys us the time we need to get into the blank halls that run through the guts of the Crystal Emporium. We move fast and quiet as we can, and the whole time I’m praying there’s no one else inside, or else this is gonna turn into a fight. To my luck and mild surprise, we get inside without a problem. We get through the door, down a hall, and around a corner all before garbage-girl grabs the last of the trash and cardboard, and the door clinks shut behind her. Now we just gotta wait for Sweetie Belle, and as it happens we don’t wait long. Ten minutes after garbage-girl takes off, a quiet couple of knocks comes at the door, and I crack it open just enough to peek outside. Sweetie Belle is standing in the dull light of the single lamp set over the door, her pale face washed grey by the fluorescent bulb. “The front is all closed up,” she says quietly. “They lowered the metal shutters a few minutes ago, and they’ll probably be coming up here in a bit.” I nod and nudge the door open to let her through, then slowly ease it shut. I don’t know if there’s anyone else in these halls right now, and I don’t even know if the sound of the door would carry, but right now my nerves are on fire and every noise sounds like a clap of thunder. “Keep yer eyes peeled an’ yer ears open, girls,” I hiss. “Last thing we need is someone sneakin’ up on us.” They both give silent nods, and as one we all draw out our masks and slip them on. A change comes over us in that moment, and it’s been getting more and more obvious as the days and weeks go by. When we put on the masks, something shifts between the three of us. Something connects us more deeply than before. It’s like every breath I take is echoed by Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle, and every one of their breaths is echoed in me. I can feel Sweetie’s pulse pounding and Scootaloo’s heart racing. I can feel them tensing and relaxing as we count the seconds. Every flex of every muscle in one of us ripples through the rest, almost like we ain’t even three different people anymore. This is why Sweetie is always so reluctant to take the mask off, I think. It’s like cutting a finger off because suddenly you lose it all the moment you’re free to breathe clean air. “Here they come,” Sweetie says in her high, shrill masked voice. I nod. I can hear them. Footsteps in the distance, echoing through the cold concrete floor of the halls. We move as one, hyper-aware of one another as we shift about and position ourselves at the neck of a T-section. Moments later the footsteps are eclipsed by the murmur of faint, casual conversation. My heart is pounding, deafening me. I know they’re talking—probably about something inane—but I can’t focus on any of the words long enough to figure out what the conversation is even about. Not that it matters. The two girls appear from around the corner. One is short and slight, kind of petite in the same way Sweetie Belle is if she were older, with wavy brown-and-green hair, and pretty freckles over an oaky complexion. She’s wearing the same blouse-and-skirt outfit as garbage-girl and as the taller, willowy girl beside her. She’s a head-and-a-half taller than her coworker with long blonde hair streaked with soft mauve, and a pair of wide, round glasses are perched on her slender nose. That’s the one who spots us, although by that point we ain’t trying to hide. All three of us are standing shoulder-to-shoulder; weapons out, masks on, and hoods up, and their conversation dies with a weak rattle as Scootaloo moves to from left to cut off their escape back the way they came, and Sweetie moves from my right to block the path to the exit. “Scream’n yer dead.” The words come out on the rasp of a blade as I hold up my hunter’s knife, and the scream that had been building up in the back of the short one’s throat dies an ignoble death somewhere near her tonsils. Sweetie’s shrill, tinny giggles echo quietly around the halls as I take a step forward and glance between the two. “We’re going back,” Scootaloo says grimly, her voice a tight, strained snarl. “You’re going to open the back lockup, and then the safe, then we’re leaving.” “G-Ginger…” The short one flails blindly for the tall one’s hand before finding it and grabbing tight. “I’m right here, Tawny,” the tall one—Ginger—replies weakly, squeezing her co-worker’s hand. “I’m right here.” She starts to look down at Tawny, but before she can move her head more than an inch I dart forward, catch her cheek with the cold flat of my blade, and force her to turn her head back. “Don’t look’t her,” I say. “Y’all look at me.” “Keys~ Keys~ who’s got the Keys~?” Sweetie’s words are an atonal sing-song melody that puts a chill down my spine and does worse to the two girls. “M-Me,” Ginger says in a brittle voice. “I… I’m the night manager, Tawny is just my closing help, she doesn’t know any of the codes, so just… just let her go, please?” “Awww…” Sweetie steps forward, leans in, and takes a deep breath. “How sweet.” Tawny has started crying, and I know I should feel something—anything—over it but I don’t. Not good, not bad, not anything. There’s just a dim kinda cold like the snows of Mount Ormond settling over my soul. Scootaloo steps forward and takes a deep, ragged breath. “Their smells are all over each other… guess there’s another reason garbage-girl leaves first.” Tawny’s and Ginger’s eyes widen as the color drains from their faces, and beneath my mask, my smile stretches to match the plaster grin I’m wearing as I pull the knife away from Ginger’s cheek and look down at Tawny. “S-Stop!” Ginger moves between me and the shorter girl. “Don’t… Don’t! I’ve got the codes and the keys okay!” My mind is buzzing with the communal sensations of Sweetie and Scootaloo. I can feel Scootaloo’s frustration and rage bubbling out of her chest and up her throat, and Sweetie’s tinny, narcotic glee that’s setting her limbs vibrating. It’s washing everything else out of my brain and like every other time we wear the masks it finally feels like the world isn’t trying to crush us in a vice. It feels good. “Grab shorty,” I snap as I seize Ginger roughly by the arm. She barely suppresses a scream, which is good. If she’d screamed I don’t know what would happen. I know Sweetie would probably do something stupid, assuming I didn’t do the same. Of course, I had no intention of actually going through with the threat I made. I’d only said it because it seemed like the sorta thing I oughta say. The problem is, we’re what you’d call committed at this point, and if they do scream I ain’t sure I’ll have many other options. Somewhere under the crowded feelings from the others, I know that that should bother me more than it does. I press the tip of my knife to Ginger’s back to force her forward while Sweetie and Scootaloo get on either side of Tawny and grab her by her arms to drag her along with us. Her blubbering is starting to get on my last nerve and it’s made worse by the tarry anger welling out of Scootaloo. Thankfully, Sweetie’s perpetual glee is counteracting it a little, even if it’s unsettling for different reasons. Thankfully, we make it to the back door of Diamond Imports without any other issues, and Ginger draws out a ring of keys, fits one shakily to the lock, and opens it up. Both of the girls are shaking and terrified, and tears streak their once perfectly made-up faces. “Move.” I give Ginger another painful jab and she lets out a strangled cry as she stumbles forward into the darkened jewelry shop. “I… I can’t see,” Ginger says. “I need to turn on a—” “Touch the light and shorty loses a finger,” Scootaloo snarls. Both of them freeze and go silent other than the soft, sobbing still coming from Tawny, and in the darkness Ginger nods faintly before making a small, choking noise of affirmation. I really hope she doesn’t mean that, but when the masks are on it’s a lot harder to tell. “It’s okay~” Sweetie coos as she steps between the four of us, friends and hostages, “I know the way, alright?” Her tone is light and cheerful and almost like it was before all the bad times came down on us, and Sweetie leans forward to playfully bop the face of her mask against mine before giggling and turning to Ginger, pulling out that ugly metal ruler with its sharpened point and welded needles—“Eenie meenie minie moe~, catch a squealer by the nose~”—and sticking the point up Ginger’s left nostril—“if she screams then cut the hoe, eenie meenie minie moe~” Ginger makes a strangled cry that’s cut off by Sweetie’s hand closing around her throat as she leans in close to the taller girl. “We’re gonna go to the back lockup, okay~?” Sweetie titters breathlessly. “Just follow me~e, unless you wanna leave your nose behind.” “Hey!” I snap. “Relax.” In spite of the mask, I can practically see the exaggerated moue Sweetie gives me as she eases up her grip before, leads the way with Ginger silently weeping behind her, I take up position on the other side of Tawny with Scootaloo, dragging the short girl along with us in their wake. True to her word, Sweetie leads us straight to the back lockup of Diamond Imports; crazy or not, her mind is still there somewhere, along with her memory and all the smarts I fell for, and she pulls back her ruler, its tip stained slightly with blood, and throws Ginger roughly forward. “Unlock it, would you kindly?” Sweetie asks with a deadly softness to her voice. The young closer doesn’t move immediately, except to look up at us and at Tawny between us with eyes so wide they seem almost bleached white in the darkness, and Sweetie cocks her head curiously to the side before raising her ruler up, achingly slowly, until the tip is pressed hard against Tawny’s jugular. “Please?” Ginger dry swallows and nods, then turns to fit another key to the back lockup. “Hope there ain’t no alarm that goes off when ya open that,” I say conversationally as I walk up beside her. “Ah’d hate t’hafta to do something about it.” “I can turn it off,” she croaks as she releases the lock and pulls the door open. Sure enough, a quiet beeping starts up and begins to climb in intensity. I jerk my head at the small security pad on the wall across from the door and she stumbles over to it, pops open the keypad, and punches in a code with trembling fingers. “Now the safe,” Scootaloo says as she prods Tawny into the room, and Sweetie laughs that weird, high titter she gets when she’s under the mask. “Would you cut that out?” Scootaloo shoots an invisible glare at Sweetie who just laughs louder. “Sorry!” She chirps, her voice cracking. “It’s just funny! See the safe is safe, but they’re not safe, and they’ll only be safe when the safe’s not safe!” “That’s not funny that’s stupid,” Scootaloo grumbles. Sweetie Belle blows a raspberry at her before turning to me and draping herself over me, all while fixing her shattered gaze on the two girls who are trembling in their designer boots. Ginger is kneeling in front of two safes, a large one set into the wall, and a smaller one set into a section of metal counter. “Why are you working on the small one first?” Sweetie asks, all humor gone from her voice and replaced with cold metal. Ginger pauses, swallows audibly, then turns her head to look at us. “I… I don’t have any of the codes to the master safe,” she says plaintively. “Only Mister Rich can get into it.” “Bullshit!” Scootaloo growls. “Ain’t bullshit,” I say, stepping between them and Scootaloo. “They ain’t lyin’, and you can tell just like Ah can, so we’ll take the little shit, the jewels, and then git, got it?” “Tch.” Scootaloo clicks her tongue but nods. Turning back to Ginger I gesture vaguely with my knife at the safe. “Better get back to it,” I say. “Ain’t got all night.” “R-Right.” While she works, I look around and spot an old security recording setup, old CCTV style, and I smirk. Filthy Rich is a cheap bastard, I guess. While Scootaloo broods near the lockup door and keeps a watch, and Sweetie lurks near Tawny, alternating between being gentle and cajoling, and tormenting her with threats and prods with her makeshift blade, I tear the security setup free and destroy as much of the internal systems as I can. No sense taking chances, and it’d take a miracle to recover anything from these tapes now. Behind me, the safe makes a soft click and pop as it cracks open and I turn, toss Ginger a burlap bag we’d brought from Ormond, and direct her to start clearing it out. “Here,” Ginger says, turning to pass us the bag we’d brought. As I reach out to take it, I hesitate. I can’t say why, but something is wrong. My ears are ringing. It’s like the barest hint of tinnitus in the deepest parts of my ears, and I lower my hand as I try to focus on it. “Is s-something wrong?” Something is wrong. I can hear it in her voice. In the sweat-stink of her fear. Her smell is different, she knows something and— “You guys hear that?” Scootaloo asks, turning to me as she gives the side of her head a couple of solid whacks. Cold sluices down my spine and freezes in my gut. “A silent alarm.” The instant the words are out of my mouth I can feel it. “YOU BITCH!” I snap. Ginger is so slow it’s like she’s a punching bag in a gym, and my fist collides with her face, shatters her glasses, and sends her flying backward an arms length into the metal wall. The wall dents, and she drops bonelessly to the ground. Tawny screams something—Ginger’s name probably—but I don’t hear it, the pounding in my ears is too loud as I dive for the small safe, practically sticking my inside it, and spot what I’m looking for. A button is set into the interior of the safe and there’s no killswitch. Just the button and then the owner probably has to shut it off themselves! “Shit!” I pull myself out of the safe and turn to see Sweetie Belle straddling Tawny and beating her to a grim paste. We don’t have time for this. I storm over to her, grab her by the scruff of the neck, and rip her off the girl. I barely spare them a glance, we have to get the fuck outta Dodge Junction or we’re done for. Besides, the brief look at them both that I do get tells me that if they wake up—and that’s a big if—it’ll probably be in traction. Hopefully, it’s bad enough they don’t remember much of us, but I can’t count on it. “Stop.” I freeze at Scootaloo’s tone. She’s standing stock still in the door to the lock-up with a fist raised. Then she gestures for us to get low as she crouches, and I follow suit. It only takes a moment before our senses sync up again. There’s someone out there now. There’s movement and snaps of a flashlight. We’re not alone anymore, and it’s probably only luck and the thick walls of the lockup that kept them from hearing Sweetie rearranging Tawny’s face. “How many?” I ask, sidling up to Scootaloo. “One rent-a-cop.” She gestures out and I follow her finger to the security guard who’s now just gotten inside the Import shop. “This is bad.” I shoot a glance at Scootaloo, then Sweetie, then the two unconscious Import employees behind us. “The cops have to be on their way, we gotta get the fuck outta here.” The security guard is halfway into the shop now, his flashlight crisscrossing the display room as he scans the area around him. His movements are sloppy and lazy; it’s like he’s barely checked in and to be fair he probably is. He’s probably expecting a false alarm because some newbie employee didn’t set the timer right or something. He isn’t expecting three girls in masks with knives to be robbing the place. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. “Rush him.” I tense as I lean forward. “Knock him down. Knock him out. Run fer the back door, and beat feet.” Scootaloo shoots me a look that’s covered by the mask but delivers a thousand words worth of pissed-off. But she doesn’t argue. Sometimes I wish she would. In this case, though, we’ve got no other choice. If we run for the door, he’ll see us for sure, maybe follow us, he’ll definitely call in which way we go, though, and that’ll make things a thousand times harder. Maybe we don’t get out at all. “It’s him or us,” Sweetie hisses. I can feel her hand tighten in a white-knuckled grip around her metal ruler stake through the thing that connects us, just like I can feel Scootaloo do the same on the handle of her keyhole saw. It takes me a moment to realise my hand is doing the exact same thing on the grip of my hunting knife. “Go.” Keeping low, we bolt silently from the back lockup and immediately scatter around the shop. The display cases hide us as we move in sync like a pack of wolves around an isolated buck. We don’t have to talk. Each of us knows where the others. Sweetie and Scootaloo move around towards the main entrance of Diamond Imports while I make for the rear of it, putting the security guard between the three of us, and as soon as we’re in position, Sweetie scrapes her stake against one of the cases. The guard jumps and whirls. I can’t get a good look at him because of how bright the light is that he keeps up near his face, but he doesn’t look too big. I can probably bring him down if I jump him. And he has his back to me. It’s now or never. I bolt from around the case at his back, knife in hand and breathing hard, moving as fast as I can, trying to cross the short distance before he registers me. And I do. Or I should have. It should have been fine. Except the door to the lockup, which had been closing silently behind us, clicks loudly shut just as I get close enough, and the spins around to face me. That shouldn’t have mattered either though. It wouldn’t have, but he gets lucky—too goddamn lucky—and his flashlight slashes across me and the beam stops dead-center on my face. It’s like someone duct-taped a flashbang to my nose and set it off. Agony ten times worse than getting a meat hook through the shoulder jabs through my eyes like hot nails and I jerk back and shriek, clawing at my mask to try and get at the burning in my skull. My knife clatters to the ground and I’m vaguely aware of the guard screaming too. I must look like a nightmare, and if he was smart he’d have run. He doesn’t. BANG! Something takes me in the shoulder and kicks my unsteady feet out from under me, sending me spinning, blind and practically deaf, onto my stomach on the floor. I hear Sweetie Belle scream my name and the guard screams again, I flip over in time to see the guard whip around just as Sweetie barrels into him full force. I hear something crack, another gunshot, and then the guard’s scream cuts off with a spine-wrenching gurgle. My shoulder aches like a bitch as I get shakily to my feet. Sweetie is sitting on top of the guard panting and staring down, and the guard is twitching unpleasantly as I approach. “Sweetie?” Scootaloo’s voice comes out hollow as she steps in behind our friend to look down at her. “What… What the fuck did you just do?” With shaking hands, Sweetie Belle pulls off her mask. Blood smears the pale, steel-stitched thing as she lowers it and looks down at the guard who has Sweetie’s ruler stake buried messily in the meat of his neck. “I… I didn’t mean to,” Sweetie mumbles as tears start to well up in her eyes as she looks up at me. “He sh-shot you, and I th-thought he k-killed you.” Tears are running down her face, and I kneel down next to the guard, horror creeping into every inch of my soul as I pull my own mask off. “We, uh, we g-gotta stop the bleedin’,” I mumble. I start to reach for the stake, then stop. If I pull it out, he’ll just go faster, but if I don’t he’ll choke and die. “We can’t,” Scootaloo says as she pulls her own mask off. Her face is sallow and she looks like she’s gonna throw up, which makes two of us. “The… That wound is too deep, he needs an ambulance.” “Well he ain’t gettin’ one!” I snap. “I didn’t mean to,” Sweetie sobs. “I swear I didn’t mean it.” It’s funny. There ain’t even that much blood. Probably because the poor guy’s choking on it. It’s weird the stuff you remember when your world is falling apart. Water flows downhill. That’s what I keep thinking. He’s lying on his back with the stake stuck down, so there ain’t much blood because it’s all going down his throat. He’ll be dead in a minute or two, way too late for an ambulance. Way too late for anyone to help him. And it’ll be Sweetie Belle who killed him. Just Sweetie Belle. Slowly, I get up, walk over to my fallen knife, pick it up, and come back to kneel in front of the dying man and my crying friend. “Bloom?” Scootaloo’s tone is cold. “What are you doing?” “We can’t save’im,” I say quietly as I grip the hunting knife. “And it’s like the masks, right? Ah ain’t lettin’ Sweetie be the only one gettin’ goose egg, that’s all.” For once, it’s Scootaloo and Sweetie who are both staring at me in disbelief as I put my knife to the guard’s chest. He’s young. That’s the worst thing, I think. I ain’t got a good look at him before it all went down on account of the light, but he can’t be much better than twenty or so. Not all that much older than my sister and her friends. “Y’all don’t gotta,” I say, looking up at Scootaloo. “In fact… be better if ya didn’t.” I swallow hard and grip the hand of the knife with both hands, point down. “Shit.” Scootaloo drops to her knees and turns her keyhole saw over. “I’m not gonna let you fucking martyr yourself, ya dumbass.” “W-Wait,” Sweetie cries. “Don’t—!” Neither of us waits for her because it doesn’t matter. I drive my knife straight down into his chest just as Scootaloo jams her keyhole saw into his throat beside Sweetie’s stake. The guard jerks, twitches, then his last breath rattles out of him as he goes still. Now we really are murderers. The knife comes free with an ugly sucking sound, and I wipe it clean on his jacket while Scootaloo works her saw free of the man’s neck. Sweetie is still staring, horrified, but frankly, I ain’t got time to coddle her. “Now what?” Scootaloo asks as she looks up at me. Something’s gone out of her eyes. There was a light there before, I’m sure of it, even after we got outta the Trials there was something there that ain’t anymore. Just another one of my shit ideas. “We take’im back with us,” I say as I sheathe the knife. “Wrap him up a little and wipe the blood if ya can. Ah’ll carry him.” “All the way back to Ormond?” Scootaloo says incredulously. “Bullshit.” “S’gotta be done,” I say as I stand and lever Sweetie up and off the poor guy. “C’mere, Sweets, yer alright.” “I didn’t mean to.” “Ah know ya didn’t.” I use the sleeve of my jacket to wipe some of the tears and blood from her face as she stares straight forward. “It was an accident.” “Ah know.” “Let’s go,” Scootaloo says as she stands up from over the guy. Once his neck and chest are… plugged, is the best way I can say it... she hands off Sweetie’s ruler stake to her as she nods down at the corpse. Sweetie takes the weapon dumbly and clutches at it like it’s a parade baton as I move past her and kneel down to pick the body up and heft it over my shoulder. It’s funny. He ain’t as heavy as I expected. “The money?” Scootaloo asks as we head for the door, and I stop. “Fuck.” I look back at the closed lockup door. The bag is back there with the two girls, along with the keyring that would open the automatically locking door. “So we got nothing out of this,” Scootaloo says grimly. “Awesome.” There’s nothing else I can say. She’s right. This is a fucking mess. So we just keep moving, out the back and down the hall, and out into the rear of the Emporium by the dumpster. As soon as we get out I can hear sirens, but they’re all coming from one direction. “Mask up and run.” I nod towards the opposite end of the parking lot, We don our masks and bolt, moving as fast as possible. There’s a lot of snow and fog, fortunately, and it’s getting thicker. If we’re lucky it’ll cover our escape. Now, all we have to do is carry a whole dead body through half of Canterlot and climb a third of a mountain, all while not being seen. No problem. My only consolation is that if we do get caught it won’t just be Sweetie getting the murder rap. “There’s no way we’re getting out of this,” Scootaloo says. Like I need her to tell me that. “Still gotta try,” I reply. Granny didn’t raise no quitter. Then again, I doubt she figured she raised a murderer neither, but that’s neither here nor there. As we hit the end of the parking lot and drop down a narrow dirt incline, Sweetie reaches out and grabs both of us by the shoulders. “Do you guys smell that?” she asks softly. The three of us share a look, and I take a deep breath. “All I smell is this guy,” I say, shrugging the body. “Smells like blood—” “—and ashes.” Scootaloo’s words freeze me solid, and I look up from the dirt, stand, and take another deep breath. Sweetie is right, and so is Scoots. The smell… this isn’t the new blood smell of the dead man over my shoulder it’s the stink of death. Old death. New death. And the smell of a butcher’s hook hanging from a bloody post in a basement lit by the lights of hell. The fog is getting thicker. No… that’s not right. The Fog is getting thicker. The sound of sirens is eclipsed by a clap of thunder as the Fog of the Trails whirls around us thickening until it’s so deep we can barely see each other. “Grab mah hand!” I reach out and grab Scootaloo’s hand just as she grabs onto Sweetie Belle. We grip tight and don’t let go, even as the ground shakes beneath us, and the sky turns from filmy winter grey into the deep black of the void. If that thing in the dark wants one of us… it’ll have to take all of us.
And AlwaysI know everyone says that no matter how bad it is someone else has it worse, but lately I’ve been starting to wonder about that. See there ain’t an infinite number of people, which means if someone has it worse than someone else, then ya got folks worse off than that person, well… Eventually, you gotta get to the bottom of the barrel. “Why are we even here?” Scootaloo asks as she scrapes a series of curling ‘S’s into the wooden table the three of us are sitting at with a sharp bit of rock. Despite the freezing temperatures and literal snow on the seats, we’re outside. All of us are wearing hoodies and jackets. I’ve got my old denim jacket over my grey hoodie, while Scootaloo has her grey denim vest over her black one, while Sweetie’s just got her thick, slightly-too-big hoodie that’s deep black and practically swallows her whole. We're outside largely because there ain't nowhere else for us to be. None of us are welcome in the cafeteria, and it’s been that way since the tail end of our freshman year. Because no one sits anywhere near Anon-A-Miss. “Because if we ain’t here then we gotta be at home?” I say as I pick at my lunch. A whole fucking school year and no one has forgotten what we did, not the students and definitely not our families. The harassment ain’t even really cooled down. We’re still the least popular girls on campus and it showed. It showed in me and Scootaloo as we drew further and further away from everyone else but our little group here at the table, but it showed most heavily—and worst—in Sweetie Belle. She was always the nicest of us, and she took what happened at the end of it all the hardest. Before everything happened she used to wear bright colors and always be smiling. Now she rarely shows any expression, wears almost all black, and I know for a fact she ain't been taking care of herself. “Anyone want my burger?” Sweetie asks tonelessly. “I’m… I’m not hungry.” Scootaloo and I both share a worried look. “I uh, I dunno if I’d call that a burger,” Scootaloo jokes weakly. “Pretty sure that’s not any kind of real meat, right ‘Bloom?” I prod the spongy patty and grimace. “Yeah, ain’t exactly farm-fed beef.” “So it’s not your brother?” Scootaloo asks. “Y’all don’t even go there.” I swat Scootaloo’s shoulder. Sweetie Belle smiles at our antics, but it’s a weak little thing. She has it the worst of us for a lot of reasons. Her family treats her like a pariah, and the school treats all three of us like human garbage, but between the three of us, Sweetie has always been the nicest. The most sensitive. We both try and cheer her up when we can, but it usually falls flat. The tiny smile I get out of her today is the best I’ve seen all week. The bell rings, signaling the end of lunch meaning we have ten minutes to get to class, but none of us move. We have gym next, and that’s pretty much hell. It gives all the students an excuse to mess with us and gives the teachers an excuse to turn a blind eye. Unless it gets really bad, they just let the students fuck with us and it always ends with Sweetie Belle in tears at least. “Skipping?” Scootaloo says more than asks. “Yeah,” I sigh. “Ah ain’t got it in me today, y’know?” “We’ll just get in trouble again,” Sweetie says quietly. Scootaloo and I both shrug in unison, and Sweetie doesn’t put up any more of an argument than that. We all silently agree to take the detention from playing hooky rather than deal with whatever new abuse the kids in gym have come up with. “Need anythin’ from yer lockers?” I ask. “Nah.” Scootaloo waves a hand and grimaces. “Someone stuck dog shit in mine, so I cleared it out.” “Mine’s got graffiti on it again,” Sweetie says softly. “I’ll pass.” Before any of the other students can come to bother us, we gather up our backpacks and move quickly around the back of the school. There’s a small area behind the gym that no one ever goes to, especially not when it’s raining, mostly because it smells like trash. As we head around the corner, I sidle up to Sweetie Belle, throw an arm over her, and pull her close and she tucks herself against me. Christmas this year had been a cold, stony affair. Applejack still couldn’t look me in the eye, and while Big Mac tries his best, he ain’t the most comforting type. Tie all that up with the fact that Granny passed a couple of months back, and that came along with getting harassed by a couple of conjobs before they finally split town, I’d say the only good thing that’s happened in the whole year and change since our big fuckup was Applejack finally getting laid. Twilight is nice enough, as city folk go. She’s a little weird, but I guess that’s just city folk in general. “How’s things at home?” I ask, looking over at Scootaloo. “Same old,” she says with a shrug. “Mom’s still in denial and Dad acts like I’m the antichrist… you?” “Mostly AJ ignores me now,” I say quietly, but my chest hitches as we reach the trash pile and take our usual seats, with Sweetie Belle practically in my lap. There’s been something on my mind lately, a really awful thought, but it’s been there all the same, and I hadn’t even brought it up to the girls. I’d hoped it would go away, but it never did. As the days and weeks pass it just gets heavier and heavier. “Am… Am Ah a monster, Scoots?” I ask. “Huh?” Scootaloo looks over at me, her hooded face painted with genuine confusion. “Because of Anon-A-Miss? I told you, just ‘cause it was your idea doesn’t mean we didn’t go right along with it, okay? If you’re a—” “Not that,” I say, shaking my head. “I…” The confession seizes in my throat, but as it does Sweetie Belle puts a hand on my cheek and turns my face away from Scootaloo so I’m looking just at her. Her pretty green eyes are framed by dark mascara to cover up her lack of sleep, and her soft curly hair pokes out from around her own hood. “What is it?” She asks. “You can tell us.” I put a hand over Sweetie Belle’s and close my eyes. “Ah’m… glad Granny passed,” I say bitterly, and on the tail end of my words I start to sob. “Ah… Ah couldn’t take it… the way she looked at me after it all came out! Lookin’ at me like she didn’t know me! Like Ah was a monster! That w-was worse than anything!” Saying the words is like vomiting poison. Granny was more like my mom than my grandmother. I don’t even remember Pear Butter’s face as anything but a picture because she died not long after I was born. Granny raised me, took care of me, taught me, and then, in the end, she couldn’t even look at me. “Shit,” Scootaloo says quietly. “That… fuck, I’m sorry Bloom we didn’t know.” I shake my head. “Ain’t any’a y’all’s fault,” I say as Sweetie wraps her arms around me and holds me tight while resting her head on my shoulder. “Ah’m the one who earned them looks.” Scootaloo opens her mouth to say something, probably to tell me I’m wrong, even though I ain’t, but she doesn’t get it out. A snowball cracks hard into the back of her head, and Sweetie Belle screams as Scootaloo staggers and faceplants into the snow. I’m up in an instant, dumping Sweetie Belle out of my lap as she scrambles to Scootaloo’s side and drops down beside her. I put both fists up, ready for the next throw as three pug-ugly teens approach from the far corner with nasty smiles on their faces. The Diamond Dogs. They were jerks before Anon-A-Miss. The whole mess just gave them an excuse to beat someone up that no one would complain about. Fido pitches a snowball at me and I knock it out of the air, ignoring the sting from my knuckles as I swipe the rock at its center. Rover and Spot throw their own snowballs and at first I think they aren’t even trying to aim at me. A split-second later, I realise I’m right. I knock the one snowball away with my arm, but I can’t do the same to the other, both of which were aimed at Sweetie Belle, so I do the next best thing. I put myself between her and the snowballs and take it to the chest. The impact puts me back two steps and knocks the wind out of me. I try to rally, but three more snowballs crack into my chest, shoulder and across my temple sending stars across my vision and putting me onto my back. Their jeering laughter fills my ears followed closely by Sweetie Belle’s sharp cry as a rock-filled snowball hits her. I’m back on my feet at the sound of Sweetie’s pained cry, and I’m seeing nothing but red as I barrel down at all three of the teenage boys. I’m not sure but I think I’m screaming as I ram into Rover, and I half-expect to just stop on the guy because he’s twice my size and better than twice my weight. Instead, he crumples around me with a wordless grunt of agony, and I swear I feel something give in his chest as I hit him. Then I’m up and swinging wildly. One fist connects with the side of Spot’s face, putting him on the ground like a sack of apples. Fido’s meaty fist slugs across the side of my face a second later sending me staggering, and he tries to follow up, cocking his arm back as he steps over Spot but I recover to fast, duck low, and lunge forward with a feral scream as I bury my head in his gut, knocking the wind from him in a painful wheeze as I bear him down to the ground on top of his friend, straddle him and start punching. Over and over, one hit, then two, then three, then I lose count as I grab him by his collar and drive my fist into his face again and again. “BLOOM!” Someone grabs me by the back of my hoodie and drags me off of Fido, and I whirl on them, fist raised as I snarl at— “Snap out of it and let’s go!” Scootaloo yells, grabbing me by the shoulders and dragging me away from the school as she does. “We can’t stay here! So if you’re gonna hit me then hit me and let’s fucking move!” Ice water sluices through me as I realise what I’d almost done. I don’t have time to say anything though as Scootaloo gives my hoodie another yank and then turns to start running away from the school grounds towards the QuikStop mart where we park our bikes so the other kids won’t mess with them. “C’mon!” Sweetie’s softer voice splits through my shock as she takes my hand and tugs and finally I start moving. We sprint through the rear fields of the school, each keeping pace with the other. I don’t know why but we never really run out of energy or wind. I’ve always been pretty athletic, and the same is true for Scootaloo, but Sweetie’s PhysEd scores have always been abysmal. That changed after we got out of the Trials. There’s something different about us now… something wrong with us, I think. Things are bad when we’re together, but at least we’re together. That all changes when we all go home, though. Something we started calling ‘The Greys’, because it really is like the world gets this grey filter over it. Sounds get dull. Feelings get dull. Food tastes like nothing at all and everything just fades into a dull roar of nothingness. At first I thought it was just me, but it didn’t take long for us to realise it was happening to all three of us. So we do our best to stay together. At least when we’re together, there’s still color. “You went fucking feral again, Bloom!” Scootaloo says angrily as we hit the edge of the school grounds, jump the ditch surrounding it, and land on the pavement. “Ah’m sorry!” I say. “Ah couldn’t stop!” “Yeah, we know,” Scootaloo says. “But every time they take a swing at Sweetie you just fucking lose it!” “And you don’t?!” I snap. “I get pissed, but we’re all getting our asses kicked here, okay?” Scootaloo replies. “I’m f-fine, you don’t have to worry about me so much,” Sweetie says quietly from my side as she wraps both of her arms around one of mine. She isn’t even out of breath. “Y’all can say that, but Ah’m still gonna,” I say. Scootaloo just shakes her head and smiles back at the two of us, and I do my best to return the expression. Even if there’s no one else in the world to take care of us, we’ll always have each other. “So…” I start, glancing over my shoulder at the school before looking back at Scootaloo, “Ormond?” “Pretty much our only option,” Scootaloo says with a laugh. “A’right,” I say. “Let’s haul ass.”
Night & DayIt takes almost two hours to maneuver through the neighborhoods leading up to the Canterlot Heights, the second-ritziest part of town aside from the Gold Coast itself. It takes another hour to get past that, through the manicured hiking trails, and into the less walked sections of the mountain. Ormond is our haven and our hideaway. It’s the only place that we can just be alone, partially because of its bad reputation but also because I’m pretty sure the city’s just plum forgotten it’s up here. The place was, I think, an old ski resort. Or at least that was the plan. There’s still construction equipment and all kinds of stuff littering the place, and the resort itself ain’t even really finished. All I know is that the three of us found it not long after the bullying got real bad when we were wandering around together, dead-set on going anywhere but back home, and stumbled on the old trail that led to the resort, and since then it’s been the only place we can get a little peace. The snow is thick around Ormond as we get to the edge of the trail that once might’ve been a street, and we park our bikes in an old utility shed by the road that’s lucky enough to still have its roof and most of its walls. “Fuck it’s cold.” Scootaloo shivers as she stows our bikes and starts rubbing at her arms. “C’mon, let’s get inside and get the fire going.” I nod, even though I don’t feel all that cold. I shiver a little now and again, and I know it’s below freezing up here but it’s like the cold doesn’t get past my skin. Sweetie Belle curls up against me as we trudge through the snow toward the ramshackle ski lodge, and I throw an arm over her shoulders as Scootaloo runs ahead to shoulder open one of the doors and hold it ajar while I usher Sweetie in. “Get’er warm,” I say, “I’ll grab some firewood.” “Should still be some around back,” Scootaloo says, nodding towards the rear of the lodge. I know, but I nod anyway, and start moving around the edge of the lodge. The snow is still falling in thick, drifting clumps as I work my way through towards the one lumber bin that’s still solid enough to hold firewood without leaking. It should stay that way too. Scoots and I found some tools in the shed we use to keep our bikes safe and shored it up, and I waterproofed it with tar a few weeks ago before the worst snows hit. Prying open the box should be a two person job. I tell Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle it’s just the old farm muscle going to work, but really it just don’t feel that heavy. I lever open the woodbox and pull out some split logs, load them up into my arms, and hip-check the box shut before moving back around through the snow towards the entrance to the lodge. It’s a big place, and I’d say it’s seen better days but I ain’t actually sure that’s true. Seems to me like the old bastard has just been waiting to fall over ever since they put up the first load-bearing pillars. Ain’t that just a mood. “Ya got the kindlin’?” I ask as I walk in and dump the stack of logs into the raised fire pit to start arranging them. Scootaloo nods as she pulls a big box out from under one of the dusty, half-rotten tables and opens it to start pulling out rolled stacks of dry branches tied up together. “Gimme two,” I say, holding out a hand. Scootaloo tosses two of the rolls my way, I grab one but the other goes a little wide and bounces off of my knuckles. I cuss and swing around to grab it before it falls on the ground and rolls into a puddle or something, but a pale hand snatches it out of the air just before it lands. “Here,” Sweetie says softly. “Nice catch,” I say with a tired grin as I take it. I go about lighting the fire with the ease of long practice. You don’t live on a farm without learning to light a fire by hand after all. Soon enough the fire is lit, a blazing star in the middle of a miserable blizzard. It ain’t quite that bad outside yet, but it’s getting on, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Scootaloo, Sweetie, and I were stuck in Ormond til morning. Not that that’d be such a bad thing. There was a surprising amount of random crap left in Ormond after the workers left. Half of the rooms were set up for lodgers and overnighters, and most of those rooms are still serviceable. Can’t sleep in them though, on account of the cold, but the beds are still good… mostly. “You ever think about just… leaving?” Scootaloo asks quietly as she nudges one of the logs, turning it over and renewing the flame. “Just taking off somewhere?” I prop myself up on the ratty old mattress we’d dragged down from upstairs. Sweetie Belle is already asleep beside me, nestled close to the fire, and I stare across it at Scootaloo on the other side. “Once’r twice,” I admit. “Ain’t got any money, though. Kinda makes it hard t’just up’n leave.” “Yeah,” Scootaloo says, her voice trailing off until— “What if we did, though?” “Get money or leave?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. “Money.” “Well… Ah guess figurin’ we managed t’get enough to get us somewhere Ah’d be keen enough on it, s’long as, well, y’know…” I look down at Sweetie, then back up to Scootaloo, who smiles across the flames at me. “Duh.” She laughs and shakes her head. “Us three are together to the end… period.” I laugh with her, it’s a little hollow but it feels good. I don’t laugh much anymore, none of us do. It’s a pretty rare thing since the Trial and Sunset. Since the Nightmare and Anon-A-Miss, and between all the bullying and the Greys, we don’t have all that much to laugh about, I guess. The fire crackles as Scootaloo turns over another log. “So when are you gonna tell her?” she asks, looking pointedly at me, then turning her gaze down to Sweetie. “Tell’er what?” I ask sullenly. “How you feel,” Scootaloo replies. “I mean, she’s smarter than both of us put together. You know that, right?” “Depends on if ya count’er cookin’,” I say, earning a wry grin from Scootaloo that fades quickly. “Seriously, though, you know she knows.” “Yeah, Ah know.” I look down at Sweetie Belle and watch her for a moment as she snores quietly on the ratty mattress. Then I reach out and brush my fingers over her hair. It’s still long, and since she fell asleep more of it is spilling out around her soft, pale face. “She’d say yes,” Scootaloo says, gesturing with the poker. “Ah know,” I say. “Then why—?” “Because Ah can’t protect’er,” I say, before Scootaloo can finish. “Ah’d be a piss poor girlfriend. Can’t protect’er, can’t help’er, can’t take care of’er… all Ah’d be able t’do is sit there like a lump’n be useless.” Scootaloo sighs and continues to prod at the fire pit. I put a hand over Sweetie Belle’s arm, and she shifts silently in her sleep before turning over and wrapping her arm around mine and holding on tight. “It’s not your fault, y’know,” Scootaloo says. “So ya keep sayin’,” I reply acidly. “It’s not any of ours.” “Then whose is it?!” I snap, barely clamping down on temper enough to keep my volume low. The last thing Sweetie Belle needs is to wake up to her only two friends arguing. “Sorry…” “S’cool,” Scootaloo says with a shrug. “But it’s not your fault.” “She’s hurtin’,” I say, putting a hand on her arm. I hate how quickly the tears come. I’m angry. I want to be angry. I don’t want to cry. I already did enough of that. I ain’t got any more left, or at least I shouldn’t. Now I just want to be angry and find something to break. “It’s how she copes,” Scootaloo says softly. “We both tried to get her to stop but if she won’t listen to you, then she sure as hell won’t listen to me. And her family doesn’t give enough of a shit about her anymore to care.” “Ah just…” I can’t stop my words thickening under a sob, “Ah just wanna make’er better, Scoots… Ah just want’er t’be happy again.” I can’t stop the tears this time. They hit me hard and fast, knocking the wind out of me, thickening up my throat and nose with snot as hot tears like bubbles roll down my face. Scootaloo stabs the poker into the fire and gets up, walks over to me, and sits down on the edge of the mattress to put her arms around me and pull me close. I bury my face in Scootaloo’s shoulder and wrap my arms around her narrow middle. I do it carefully, I know she’s got bruises. She hugs me a lot harder. Not because I don’t have bruises, but because she knows that I don’t care. That I’d rather hurt and have the hug than not. “Ah love you, Scoots,” I sob. “Ah’m sorry Ah got us inta all this crap, it’s all mah fault, Ah sh-should j-just—” “Ssh,” Scootaloo puts a hand on the back of my head and brushes her fingers through my hair. “It’s okay, we’re all good, Bloom… I love you too, you and Sweetie. It wasn’t your fault, it doesn’t matter who came up with it, because we all did it.” “But Ah—!” “Together forever, remember?” Scootaloo says, cutting me off. “Us three? We're gonna be together forever. A soft hand grips my fingers, and I look down to see a sleepy Sweetie Belle staring up at me. She takes my hand and gives it a tug, and Scootaloo goes along with it, lying down on the mattress on one side of me while Sweetie Belle curls up on the other side, burying her face against my chest as she goes back to sleep. It’s freezing outside, and the firepit is just enough to keep the worst of it out. It’ll burn out by mid-morning sometime, I know, but we’ll be gone by then. “We’ll change things, Bloom,” Scootaloo says quietly as she snuggles up against my back, and I put a hand over hers and twine our fingers together. “We can do it.” I nod silently. Whatever it takes. For Sweetie and Scootaloo. For my best friends. For the girls who mean more to me than my own damn life. I’ll do whatever it takes.
In The MountainsWe wake up early in the morning. The fire pit is still burning faintly, and the embers are nice and hot. It’s enough to chase out the worst of the cold and between that, the mattress, and two warm bodies wrapped around me, it’s the most comfortable I’ve been in weeks. Applejack will be mad because I’m not home, and probably relieved at the same time. If I’m not home, I’m not working… not doing my chores. But at the same time I know she hates me. She hates having me around. Hates looking at me. I’m just a reminder that her friend is dead for no reason. Worse than dead, honestly. She didn’t see what Sunset turned into, in the end. She didn’t see the hate in Sunset’s eyes… or feel the bite of her claws. Applejack never saw what my little plan really created, and that’s probably a good thing. If she ever knew what really happened to Sunset in that place, she’d probably just kill me. Sometimes, I think that would be a relief. “Hey, you up?” Scootaloo asks groggily. “Yeah,” I mutter. “Cool, got any food?” I sit up sullenly and cast my eyes around for my bag. Sweetie Belle mumbles something unintelligible in her sleep as she tightens her grip on my arm, and I smile a little as I reach out to brush her messy two-tone hair from her face. “Yeah,” I say after a minute. “Stole some stuff from the kitchen ‘fore Ah went t’school… figured this might happen.” “Always the gal with the plan,” Scootaloo says with a grin. I don’t smile. My last plan was shitty on a scale that beggared belief, so that wasn’t exactly what you’d call a compliment. I extract myself from Sweetie and plod over to where my bag lays at the edge of the mattress on hands and knees, fish around inside, then pull out a small tupperware. “S’a little busted, but Ah reckon it tastes fine,” I say as I crack it open and pull out a broken half of a fritter to pass to Scootaloo. Scootalloo takes it gratefully and starts eating. “Mmph, no pwoblem~,” she mumbles around the mouthful of pastry before swallowing. “Ah! I haven’t eaten since like, yesterday morning. I’m starving.” I’m not, but I don’t say it. My stomach feels like a stone. “Here,” I pass her the other half. “Ah got one fer me and another fer Sweetie.” “Awesome.” She grins as she takes the fritter and shoves it in her mouth. I pull out the long bottle of water I brought and sip some down before passing it to Scootaloo. I pull out the other fritter while I move around to Sweetie’s side of the mattress and settle down beside her near the fire. “Mornin’,” I say softly. She stares up at me with a chalky expression. I would give anything—anything—to see the light come back to her eyes. “Morning,” she says softly. “Hungry?” I hold up part of a fritter. “Ya oughta eat somethin’.” She takes it wordlessly and starts nibbling. Her heart isn’t in it, though. Like me, she’s not really feeling all that hungry, but she’s trying. For my sake and for Scootaloo, she’s trying. It breaks my heart. “So…” Scootaloo starts, lowering the other half of her fritter, “...what I said last night, y’know?” Sweetie and I both look over at her. “Y’mean ‘bout money?” I ask. “Yeah.” “What about it?” Sweetie chimes in sullenly. “No one who knows us would hire us, and even if they did then the moment they found out what we did we’d be gone.” I grimace. She’s not wrong. Time was that there were a number of family friends that would have hired me and any of my friends, at least seasonally, but I’m the black sheep of the family now. News travels fast along the branches of the Apple Tree, and over the last year, and especially at Christmas, it was made pretty clear that I wasn’t one of them anymore. Not really. “I know,” Scootaloo says. “That’s not what I’m talking about.” I raise an eyebrow, and start to open my mouth to ask what she is talking about then, when it hits me. “Scoots—” “I didn’t say it was a good idea,” she says bitterly before taking another bite of the fritter, chewing it and swallowing it down. “B—ack! W-water!” She flails for the bottle and I toss it to her. Scootaloo slugs down a few swallows, sighs and then laughs as she caps the bottle again and passes it over. “A-Anyway, I’m not saying it’s good or right or anything,” she continues. “But we’re not exactly looking at a lot of options and… and if we keep going like this, it’s gonna end bad.” I look around the miserable ruin of Ormond. It’s already bad. That this place—this forgotten, desolate strip of snowbound hell that barely has a roof and that no reasonable person would set foot in during the winter—is our refuge and home-away-from-home pretty much says it all. And Scootaloo’s right, it’ll get worse. “What are we supposed t’do? Knock over a convenience store?” I snap. “Why not?” Both Scootaloo and I both turn our heads slowly to look over at Sweetie Belle, who had just spoken up to say something that… that didn’t sound like Sweetie Belle at all. She gets up from the mattress and plods over to the side of the dying firepit to grab the poker and stoke the embers. “Are they gonna hate us more?” She continues softly. “Beat us up more? Knock us around more? Mess with our stuff more?” Sweetie looks up and over the fire at the pair of us staring at her. Her eyes are shadowed with exhaustion and heavy with gloom, but there’s something else, something deeper that’s lying just past the misery. “Why does it matter?” “Why does ‘knockin’ over a convenience store’ matter?” I ask with a weak laugh. “Y-Yer kiddin’ right?” I look between Sweetie and Scootaloo. Their faces are hard and bitter. They’re angry. Hell, I’m angry. I hate everything about this. I hate going to school, I hate coming home, I hate the looks everyone, even my own family, gives me any time I walk into the room. I hate the fact that I made one decision and it pretty much ruined the lives of everyone I love. But this is… “Seriously, Bloom,” Scootaloo says finally. “Why not? Sweetie’s right, what’ve we got to lose?” “Maybe we go t’jail?” I say blithely. “We’re still minors,” Sweetie says. Her voice is barely a whisper over the sound of the poker scraping at the hot ashes of the firepit. “Even if we mess it up we’ll just go to juvie, and there’s only one in the area so we’ll still be together, and then…” “Then at least we’ll be away from everyone else,” Scootaloo says sharply. “Everyone already looks at us like we’re a bunch of murderers, so some petty theft shouldn’t turn anyone’s worldview inside out.” I open my mouth to argue but nothing comes out. I should be able to argue against this, right? There should be a reason not to do what my friends are saying we should do… right? Except Scootaloo and Sweetie are making a good point. Everyone already treats us like garbage. Our families won’t look at us and when they do it's just enough to make us wish they hadn’t. We’re pariahs at school, or worse. We’re everyones’ punching bag because nobody wants to be the one to stick their neck out on account of Anon-A-Miss. Not even the teachers. Blind eyes all around. “Girls this…” I look between them, and a cold knot forms in my chest, and I trail off and look down. After a long moment of silence I look back up at my two best friends. “Ah guess… Ah guess this is where we’re at, huh?” I say. “Guess so,” Scootaloo says grimly. “Robbin’ people?” I say again. “Robbing stores,” Sweetie corrects gently. “Stores aren’t people.” She has a point. We weren’t mugging people. If we did do this, then we’d be taking money out of a till, not out of someone’s pocket. That made it a little easier to think of doing this. “”I’m tired of always… always getting hurt,” Sweetie says in an empty voice. “I’m so tired of hurting… I just want to go away.” The way she says ‘go away’ puts a chill down my spine, the look on Scootaloo’s face tells me I’m not the only one. “O-Okay, so say we do this thing,” I start, standing up and looking over at Sweetie. “How we gonna not get caught?” “Masks and gloves,” Scootaloo says. “Y’all got money fer that?” I ask dryly. “We’ve got gloves…” Sweetie says, then trails off for a moment before looking back up at the pair of us, “and masks.” “We do?” Scootaloo asks. I stare at Sweetie for a moment before closing my eyes and groaning. I know what she’s talking about and that just sounds stupid. “C’mon, Sweetie, ya can’t be serious!” I say, earning a questioning look from Scootaloo. “Do you have a better idea?” Sweetie asks. “They’re molded to our faces, so we know they fit!” “Wait, those things?!” Scootaloo barks. Then she starts laughing. Cackling, really. She rolls back onto the mattress and kicks her legs as she starts to laugh to the point that she’s not even really breathing anymore. I can’t help but smile a little at that, and even Sweetie Belle cracks a small grin as Scootaloo rolls around on the dirty mattress and howls. “Th-Those things are so creepy, though!” Scootaloo says finally, and breathlessly. “It weren’t mah idea for’em t’look like that,” I say, looking pointedly at Sweetie, who blushes. “But Ah guess fair’s fair, they’d work fine, right?” “Yeah,” Scootaloo agrees. “And we never turned them in for the art project because, let’s face it, if we’d brought them to class they’d have just ended up broken.” “Sweetie’s already got broke, remember?” I say. “When AJ kicked mah bag across the kitchen the day after Rainbow showed up?” “Broke, or improved?” Scootaloo asks, wiggling her eyebrows. “Seriously, I think you improved it.” The truth was we knew that Sweetie’s would never be accepted. The teacher would have taken one look at it and failed her on the spot. Rather than let that happen to Sweetie, Scootaloo and I just left our projects at home and told the teacher that we hadn’t done them. All three of us got zero percent on our projects that day, and afterward Sweetie hugged us and cried because she was so happy we were her friends. All-in-all? Worth it. “So… masks, gloves… we good?” “Weapons.” Scootaloo and I both look up at Sweetie Belle in shock, and she raises an eyebrow at us. “What?” she asks. “We’re… we’re robbing a place, right? So… we need to threaten them with something, don’t we?” I hadn’t thought of that, and if I’m being honest it doesn’t really sit right with me. But Sweetie’s right. If we just barged into a gas mart and demanded money with our bare hands, the only thing the clerk would do before calling the cops is laugh at us. “Ah got a steel huntin’ knife,” I say quietly. “Heavy old thing, too. It was mah papaw’s.” Scootaloo twists around, turns to the kindling chest, and drags it out, pops it open, and fishes around in it for a while before drawing out an old keyhole saw with a straight wood handle, a pointed tip, and a serrated metal blade. She closes it up before holding the tool up with a faint grimace. Nothing cut by that was gonna heal up quick or easy, but it’d put a scare into whoever she threatened with it. “I have something I can use back at the house,” Sweetie says. “And the masks?” “Back at mah place, where we made’em,” I say. “Your creepy chainsaw massacre basement?” Scootaloo says, nudging me in the ribs. She laughs, but the truth is that none of us like going in basements anymore. Not since we got strung up in one by Sunset after she went batshit on us. We did our project down there because we needed the tools and the privacy, but we got out of that place as fast as we could every night. “Yeah, yeah.” I swat at Scootaloo’s shoulder. “I’ll grab’em, and we’ll meet up here tomorrow?” Scootaloo nods, and we both look over at Sweetie Belle who’s staring down at the fire and the dying embers. The poker is in her hand, buried in the meat of the largest log, and her eyes are glazed over as she watches it burn. “Sweetie?” She starts when I say her name, and looks up at me with wide eyes. “You okay?” Scootaloo sits up straighter. Sweetie Belle lets out a slow breath that carries a touch of mist even though she’s standing right over the flames. “I’m fine,” Sweetie says finally. “Just cold… uhm, I’ll go grab my stuff, then come back here, okay?” Scootaloo and I share a glance. “Like, right back here?” Scootaloo asks. “You’re not going to stay—” I elbow Scootaloo in the ribs and she shuts up. “Ah’ll meetcha back here, then,” I say. “Once Ah grab the masks.” “You don’t have to,” Sweetie says. “Gonna do it anyway,” I reply. Despite herself, she smiles at me, and that small, lonely expression reminds me of why I’m agreeing to all of this. Whether or not we’re willing to say it, and whether or not her family wants to admit it, Sweetie Belle is in danger. Real, serious danger. Neither of us know how to help her any other way than just being there for her, and if we’re apart for too long the Greys settle in, and I know that’s when Sweetie gets to her worst. I think part of why she does what she does to herself is to escape the constant dull nothingness of the Greys. Part of me wishes I could just get her medical help, but I know if anyone finds out what she’s doing they’ll take her away from the two of us. They don’t know about the Greys, and they probably can’t even tell that it happens because, I think, it comes from that ‘other’ place. Hell, maybe it’s just Sunset cursing us from beyond the grave. Guess that’d be fair enough. “Thank you,” Sweetie says softly. I shrug, and look over at Scootaloo who nods. “I’ll be here too,” she says. “But probably later.” “Sounds fine t’me,” I say. “Ready?” “Nope,” Scootaloo replies with a dry laugh. “But let’s go anyway.” Sweet Apple Acres ain’t what it used to be. Not that it ain’t still a big farm that supplies apples all over Canterlot, because it’s still that. No, what changed is the folks that keep the farm. Once upon a time, I guess we were a family. Me and Applejack and Big Mac and Granny Smith. Together, the four of us, plus some help from Applejack’s friends now and again and from seasonal hands when we could afford it, kept the place in good repair. More than that, though, we kept it a home. The place was always warm and welcoming. There was always a place at the table for a stranger who needed a bite to eat, or a friend who needed a place to stay for the night. Things changed when Sunset died. Everything changed when Sunset died. That’s when my world started to spin down the toilet, and take everything I loved with it. Not that I’m blaming Sunset, mind you. I’m not. I can’t really blame a dead girl for dying especially since I had a hand in the killing. No, I know whose fault it is because I have to look her in the eye every time I glance at a mirror. It was my bright idea. Whatever Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle say, it will always have been my idea. It’s late morning by the time I ride back into the familiar orchards of the acres. Thankfully, Applejack isn’t around. If she were, I’d probably have to waste a couple of hours getting another lecture about doing my chores from my big sister all while watching her visibly try not to beat the everloving bejeezus out of me. Applejack never did have the keenest grip on her temper, and she loses it more often than not around me. Fortunately, that mostly means yelling and throwing stuff rather than hitting me. For now, anyway. I glance around furtively as I bike past the farmhouse and turn towards the barn. The old mammoth structure has definitely seen better days, mostly because we just can’t afford to keep it up as well as we used to, but it’s still holding together well enough. I slip inside the barn and throw the kickstand on my bike before peeking out of the main doors. Still no sign of Applejack. She ain’t in town, I know that much for sure because the truck is still here, and if I’m really lucky she’s out in the north orchard mending that busted fence. It’s on the ass end of the property so she’d have just loaded up a wheelbarrow and rolled it out there so as not to make a bunch of trips back and forth. Grabbing my backpack, I make a run around the east side of the barn towards the cellar door, pull it open, and step inside. It’s dark and I keep it that way. Ever since I got back from the Trials my night vision has been as keen as anything. I can pick out the shapes of the steps and the whole of the cellar with barely an effort, and I move past the stored apples and cider barrels to the rear of the basement where the workbench is. I hate being down here. The musty smell and feeling of being underground reminds me too much of the basement in Sunset’s Trial. It reminds me too much of being on a hook. The skin just under my shoulder and over my heart itches and aches. There’s no scar there, where the pike of the butchers hook split through my skin to suspend me above the ground, but I can still feel the phantom pains of it. Ignoring the ache, I move to the workbench and kneel down to grab the small wood box I’d stashed our art projects in after Sweetie’s was broken. They’re covered and wrapped in a thick burlap cloth to keep dust and rats off. I don’t know why I wanted to keep them safe, because it’s not like I thought we’d ever use them at the time. Maybe it’s just because it’s something the three of us made together. Maybe that’s enough. I unwrap them one at a time to check them over and make sure they’re still in good shape. They’re all carved from good, solid wood, treated for water, and coated with primer, then painted a dull, wall-plaster white. The first one is mine, and the broad, crude, toothy smile I daubed onto it with my fingers grins at me underneath eyes that are just circles with notches carved down the middle of them that go straight through and serve as eyeholes. Next is Scootaloo’s mask which is almost identical to mine. That was kind of the point. The smile is the same, but the circular eyes have a center point that’s been hollowed out by a hand drill instead of notched vertically to provide vision. And last… I grimace as I pick up Sweetie Belle’s mask. When Applejack broke it, I wanted to be angry. Maybe I was angry somewhere deep beneath the Greys, but I just couldn’t reach it. Instead, after she broke it, I just went to the cellar and tried to put it back together. I knew there was no fixing it, but I tried anyway. Sweetie hadn’t even managed to paint the smile on yet, and she never would. It broke into three pieces when Applejack kicked it. Bad luck she managed to land her foot right in the middle of the darn thing before pitching it at me. I don’t know if it was the kick or the throw that broke it for good, and I guess it doesn’t matter, but it still makes me mad. I sanded the rough, broken edges of the three fragments so they’d fit together kind of like the pieces of a puzzle. I drilled small holes along the broken, sanded edges, then took some nails, pliers, and a spool of wire, and wrapped the heads nails in the wire before slotting them into the holes. Each nail was connected to another one across from it, and it was a little like stitching something together using metal. Once they were in, I twisted the nails so they’d pull together, one after the other, until the pieces of the broken mask fit tight. Then I turned it over and braced the mask against the desk to carefully flatten the point of each nail with a hammer until it rested flush against the wood. Once that was done, I gave it a metallic paint finish to make the nails blend in, and fixing it took me the better part of a night, but when I finished it was at least wearable. Not that it would matter for our class, but it was Sweetie Belle’s and fixing it was the best I could do. I lift the crudely wired-together mask out last, and turn it this and that, examining it for flaws or flexes in the wood, before setting it back down, satisfied that it was still intact. “Good morning.” The mask clatters out of my hand as I whip around, and for a moment I think I’m trapped in a nightmare. There’s something in the dark. Something with twisting arms like spider-legs and scorpion stingers. Something waiting to pull me apart and put me back together all wrong—ALL WRONG! They twist and chitter and snap, and… and… I blink away the terror-fueled vision as Twilight Sparkle steps closer, her silhouette resolving out of the nightmare darkness, and into reality. The lights are still out, but she doesn’t seem bothered by it, she’s just staring down at me with a faint smile. “Sorry,” she says softly. “Did I startle you?” All of the clothes Twilight is wearing are Applejack’s, from the thick sweater to the flannel button up, to the heavy jeans and boots. All of it is just a little too big on her, which actually manages to make it look endearing more than clumsy. “Ah’m fine,” I say quietly. My voice comes out dull and faded, and I grit my teeth as I can feel my senses starting to slip into the malaise of the Greys. “You didn’t come home last night,” Twilight says. I shrug as I turn and wrap the masks up in the burlap before Twilight can see them, and stick the whole mess of them into my backpack. “Just needed t’grab somethin’,” I say as I stand up and sling the strap of the backpack over my shoulder. “Ah’m takin’ off.” Twilight doesn’t move out of my way, instead she just eyes me for a long moment before glancing over my shoulder at the workbench, then back down at me. “We got a call yesterday that you weren’t in any of your afternoon classes,” Twilights says finally. “And I got another one this morning that you didn’t show up to your morning ones.” “Bet AJ’s livid, huh?” I say dully. “She was pretty mad last night,” Twilight agrees. “But… I didn’t tell her about this morning.” I raise an eyebrow at that. “Why?” “Because I think you probably have a good reason for skipping your classes,” Twilight says gently. “You’re a lot smarter than anyone seems to give you credit for, and I think if you’re skipping then it’s because you know what you’re doing.” Snorting derisively, I try to move past Twilight, but before I get past her she puts a hand out and sets it against my shoulder. The moment she touches me a cold jolt goes down my spine and, briefly, my ears are filled with that chittering noise again that turns my legs to lead and my bowels to jelly. Even though it makes no sense, I’m suddenly terrified of her. I don’t want to look up because part of me is absolutely sure I’m just going to see that twisting darkness. I force myself to do it anyway, and the moment I do the fear is gone. Twilight is staring down at me with worry on her face. “Are you okay?” Twilight asks. “I know your sister… and I know she’s angry, at you and herself, and at a lot of things, and I know I’m not really your family, but I still care about you, Bloom.” I let out a slow sigh, then take a deep breath and shrug again, but I don’t pull away from her. The Greys are settling in, dulling the pain along with everything else, but some part of her is breaking through it for whatever reason. Staving it off. “Ah’m just tryin’ t’take care’a mah friends,” I say. “And if AJ don’t like it, she can go sit on a fencepost’n spin.” Twilight laughs a little, to my surprise, and then nods. “I won’t tell her I saw you,” she says finally. “And I definitely won’t tell her you said that.” I stare down at her hand for a moment, then look back up at her. “Thanks.” “I’m on your side, Bloom,” she says as she lowers herself a little. “I promise, okay?” “You’d pretty much be the only one,” I reply with a dark chuckle. “That’s okay with me.” Maybe I misjudged Twilight. I always thought she was a little odd, especially with all the times she tried to ‘engage’ with me, and talk to me about stuff. I figured she was just trying to suck up to Applejack by being nice to her little sister, but the way she’s talking I think she might actually care. It’s… kind of nice. “I’ll try and smooth things over with the school,” Twilight says, smiling. “Take the day off, okay? Come back when you’re ready. I’ll be here, just take care of yourself.” Letting out a slow breath, I nod. “Thanks, Twi’,” I say. “Ah… Ah really do appreciate it.” “Take care of yourself,” she says as she straightens out. “Now, I’ve got to grab a few things for Jackie. She left some of her tools here and didn’t want to walk all the way back from the north fence to get them.” “Ah figured,” I reply. “And be careful.” I pause, then look back at her. She’s still standing in the dark, staring at me, and smiling. Maybe I’m just imagining it but the way she said that… Shaking my head, I turn away again to leave quickly so as not to catch the eye of Big Mac, just in case he was coming back from wherever he is on the property. Also just in case Applejack decided to say screw it and meet her girlfriend half way. Hopping on my bike, I knock the kickstand up and take off back to Ormond with the masks. I wonder if Twilight would’ve been so keen on me going my own way if she knew what I was planning to do later on? Probably not, and if this went south she’d probably kick herself for not turning me in to my sister. Not that it matters now. We’ve made our decisions.
And In The TombsI’m the first one back to Ormond, which surprises me. Sweetie Belle lives a lot closer, out in Whitetail, and we all left at the same time, so she should have been back first. Scootaloo already said she’d be delayed, probably because her dad was going to shout her ear off about her playing hooky. If he tries to lock her up in her room again, we’ll just go and bust her out though. Her old man installed a window lock on the outside, but it’s a cheap one, and easy to pick. On another note, that’s how I learned that Sweetie Belle can pick locks. I haven’t asked her how or where she learned it and I’m not sure I’ve got the stones to do so in the future. With the afternoon crawling onward and still no sign of my friends, I try to fight off the encroaching Greys by busying myself with keeping Ormond from falling apart. The good news is that, with all the construction equipment, abandoned tools, and old materials, better than half the stuff is still useable. I block up a few more windows with thick wooden planks to keep the worst of the wind and snow out, and slather on a coat of tar on each before spraying it down with a fixative to keep the stuff from peeling too bad in the weather. I chop some more wood too, refilling the lumber box after reaching down deep and dragging out the oldest stuff. I throw the old logs into the firepit along with kindling, and get to work starting the fire. The early evening has fallen and darkness spilled across the mountain by the time I hear someone else enter the lodge of Mount Ormond. I’d recognise those quiet footsteps anywhere. “Hey.” I look up from the merrily burning fire at Sweetie Belle, who’s stepping gingerly through the old halls and into the main den of the lodge where we dragged the mattresses. “Hey,” I say softly. “Thought y’all were comin’ right back.” “I got caught up.” Sweetie’s reply is hollow, but I’m not sure if it’s because of the Greys or if she’s trying to hide something. My bet is the latter. I take a deep breath and with the smell of campfire ash and snow comes the gentle scent of Sweetie Belle’s shampoo, her lip balm, and beneath that is the smell of antiseptic spray, rubbing alcohol, the course fibrous smell of new bandages, and under all of that is the familiar copper smell of— “—blood.” Sweetie doesn’t move or recoil, she just looks at me with those empty eyes that are still full of the Greys from being apart for a whole day “C’mere.” I nod towards myself and hold out my hands, palms up. She puts her hands in mine, her left in my right, her right in my left, and I run my thumbs over her knuckles before turning them over. “I can’t help it,” Sweetie says quietly. “It hurts. Even when everything is still grey at least it still hurts. It makes the world stop shaking, and it makes the Fog go away.” I let go of her hands, put an arm over her shoulder, and I walk her over to the mattress where we sit down. Sweetie shrugs off her jacket, despite the cold, and rolls up the sleeves of her hoodie to show arms wrapped in fresh bandages. The small stains on the linen are still faintly red, and I count five, six, seven… eight stains. Small and red. My throat is like a vice that’s been cranked shut and it’s choking me from the inside. It’s worse because there’s nothing I can say that I ain’t already said. No matter how much I want her to stop, no matter how much Scootaloo wants her to stop, she doesn’t. She says she can’t and maybe that’s true. I don’t know, and I don’t understand, all I know is that she’s hurting, and all she does is trade one kind of hurt for another that’s easier to deal with. Maybe that just makes Sweetie the smart one. “Sorry,” she whispers. “Why?” I ask through my closing throat. “Ain’t yer fault… Ah’m the one who can’t help ya.” “Not everything is your fault, Bloom,” Sweetie says, finally looking up at me. Her eyes are so green. It’s like looking at sunshine coming through the leaves of an apple tree in the spring. “Does it hurt?” Sweetie shrugs. “I guess so?” She says quietly. “But everything hurts, so it’s more like letting something go after holding on too long. Like when you’re playing tug-of-war and you’re pulling so hard that the rope is cutting your skin, but you don’t feel it until you let go and the air hits it, and then it’s over and it’s… it’s a relief.” Rather than answer, I reach out and put both hands over her bandaged left arm, and run my palm along the rough linen until I find the little butterfly pin that keeps it in place. Carefully, I undo the pin, and for a moment I think Sweetie is going to stop me, but she doesn’t. She just waits and watches. It’s like unwrapping a Christmas present. That’s the completely absurd and idiotic thought that passes through my head as I slowly unwind the bandage from around her arm. When I get down to the skin it sticks to the bloody patches of the wounds. I pull at cloth cautiously, trying to be careful not to tear any scabs, until finally the stained roll of bandages falls freely to the mattress. Her skin is pale as Granny’s good porcelain, but now there are ridges like chips and notches on tea cups covering her arm. Those are just the healed ones though. The open wounds are ragged and wicked, like she’d used some kind of dull piece of scrap metal instead of a knife. The worst part is I can see the flesh knitting and the wound closing with unnatural speed. “They close so fast now,” Sweetie says shakily as she looks down at her arm with me. “My skin doesn’t feel real. It’s like trying to c-cut through soft wood, and when I do, it just seals up unless it’s deep and ragged and… and even then it closes so quickly.” “Somethin’ changed us when we went to that place,” I say as I lay a hand over the wound nearest to her wrist. Her skin is warm, and the blood is warmer. “Ain’t sure what, but it twisted us all up on the inside.” Sweetie Belle starts to shake as I hold on to her hand. The Greys are going away, and the feeling of being alive is flooding back in. The hate, the shame, the guilt, and all the grief is flooding back in like water into a reservoir. “P-Please stop looking,” Sweetie begs through wet sobs. “P-Please… I’m… I know it’s d-disgusting and u-ugly a-and—” I bring her damaged arm up and kiss the palm of her hand. “Ain’t ugly,” I mumble against her fingers. “Y’all ain’t even halfway t’ugly… yer the most beautiful girl in the whole world, Sweetie. Always have been.” She doesn’t reply. She just hangs her head and cries quietly. We stay like that for a little while, and while she cries I pull out the first aid box I took from the kitchen and crack it open. I take out some of the bactine spray, and a new roll of bandages, and wrap up Sweetie’s arm. Then I move to her right arm, which ain’t no less of a mess than her left, and carefully replace the bandages there too. If that’s all I can do anymore, then I’ll do it. When Scootaloo finally shows up, it’s past eight at night, and she looks awful. Her head is hung low and covered by her hood, and her hands are shoved in the front pockets as she walks over to where Sweetie and I had settled in on the mattress by the fire-pit with me sitting behind her and my arms wrapped around her middle, and her head resting sleepily against my shoulder. “Hey,” I call out quietly, trying not to disturb Sweetie. “Sorry I’m late,” Scootaloo answers. The words come out rough and raw, and I frown at the sound as she drops down on the mattress beside us, sidles closer and lays her head on my shoulder. “You okay?” She shakes her head silently. “Yeah, me neither.” We watch the flames for a while, maybe an hour, before Scootaloo finally speaks up. “My parents are getting a divorce.” I turn my head slowly to stare at Scootaloo, and even Sweetie Belle snaps out of her grim malaise to look worriedly over at our friend. I swallow thickly and look between Sweetie and Scootaloo a few times before settling back on Scootaloo. “W—What?” Scootaloo sniffles and moves a little closer to us, and Sweetie Belle moves around to wrap her arms around Scootaloo’s middle while I put my arms around both of them until we’re surrounding our crying friend. “Dad f-fucking snapped tonight,” Scootaloo sobs, and her words come out thick and clumsy. “We were having d-dinner, and Mom was doing that thing where she’s acting like everything is fine and shit, and he just snaps and starts screaming at Mom and me, about how I’m a m-murderer and how he can’t show his face anywhere. Then M-Mom started screaming back, and then he h-hit her, and I yelled at him and—” She looks up at me and my heart lodges in my throat. Her face is a mess of bruises, and her nose is bent wrong, there’s dried blood dripping over a split lip, and her right eye is almost swollen shut. “Here, lay down,” Sweetie says gently as she pulls Scootaloo away from me and nudges her down to the mattress. There isn’t much resistance left in Scootaloo, so she lets Sweetie lay her back and pull her hood away. Sweetie doesn’t flinch at the mess Scootaloo’s face is in, she just reaches over the edge of the mattress and picks up the first aid kit from where I left it, and cracks it open. Cotton swabs clenched in a pair of tweezers and dabbed with rubbing alcohol go first to wipe up the blood and mucus around her face, cleaning up Scootaloo’s nose, lips, and the space around her eyes. Sweetie Belle’s hands are careful and precise, just like her sister’s, and once that’s done she pulls out a box of small white adhesive strips to put on the cuts on her lip, the ones over and under her eyes, and all the while she whispers soft, calming words. All I can do is just cradle Scootaloo while Sweetie Belle works. I lay down beside her and wrap her in my arms and wait out the pain, all the while knowing we have no choice now. “Deep breath, Scoots,” Sweetie says as she braces Scootaloo’s nose with her finger and thumb. “On three… one, tw—” CRACK “MOTHERFUCKER!” Scootaloo snarls as she jerks in my arms, and I tighten my grip to keep her from spasming out of Sweetie’s hands. “Sorry,” Sweetie says with a brittle chuckle. “It uhm… it’s supposed to hurt less if you’re not expecting it.” Using a roll of cotton and some tape from the kit, Sweetie fashions a makeshift brace for Scootaloo’s nose, wipes up the blood one more time, then pulls back. “There,” she says softly. “That’s not so bad.” Scootaloo sits up and gently lays a hand over her nose. Her eyes are hollow and miserable as she loudly clears her throat, snorts, and hocks a massive, bloody loogie into the shadows past the fire-pit. “Gross.” I say, trying for a laugh as I sit up with her. “I think he was really trying to kill me,” Scootaloo says grimly, and Sweetie and I share a worried look. “Like, if it weren’t for whatever happened to us between here and Sunset’s crazy fucking Trial that made us tougher, I really think Dad woulda killed me.” “That’s… that ain’t right, is it?” I ask cautiously. “Ah mean, he… he wouldn’t’a just…” Scootaloo shakes her head. “You didn’t see him, Bloom,” she says shakily. “The look in his eyes… he was really gonna kill me. If I hadn’t gotten outta there, he would’ve just beat me to death. My own dad hates me.” “Rarity and my parents hate me too,” Sweetie says quietly. “Or maybe… I don’t know… it’s like they pretend I don’t exist.” “Ah wish AJ would pretend Ah don’t exist,” I grumble, then I relax a little as I remember this morning. “But… but Twilight ain’t so bad. Treats me okay, Ah guess. Suppose Ah’m the lucky one.” Not that it matters. I’m glad Twilight is a good person. I’m glad that she’s with Applejack and that she’s maybe helping my sister through all this shit because that’s the thing; Applejack may hate me, but I don’t hate her. She’s right to hate me. I’m the one who fucked up and made life miserable for everyone. If anyone’s gonna be hated then it oughta be me. So yeah, I’m glad that Twilight’s around, but that don’t mean I’m going to be sticking around. Especially not with Scootaloo this way. “Well, if we weren’t certain ‘fore this then we are now, huh?” I say as I reach back and grab my backpack, pull it up, and unzip it. “I ain’t lettin’ your dad take you anywhere, no way, no how, and yer mom’ll probably wanna skip town.” “Pff, over my dead body,” Scootaloo grumbles. “I’m not leaving you girls… ever.” “Same here,” Sweetie says firmly. “So… guess we’re doing this?” I reach into the backpack and pull out the burlap-wrapped masks. I pull the thick, rough cloth away to reveal the first one, mine, and pick it up. Scootaloo takes hers and turns it over in her hands, then smiles at the unsettling grin on it. Sweetie smiles too at the rough, shattered mess of her mask, and picks it up. She’s careful at first, then gives it a few test tugs and pulls before looking up at me with a grin brighter than I’ve seen in weeks. Bright enough that I smile back at her. “I love it,” she says happily. She fits it over her face and then lets go, and it settles easily. I can see her bright, leaf-green eyes through the cracks I’d widened just enough to allow them to serve as eyeholes without compromising the integrity. “Am I still beautiful?” Sweetie asks, her voice sounding strange through the mask. Frantic… almost breathless. “Prettiest girl in the world,” I say weakly, and Scootaloo gives me a wry grin before nudging me with her foot. I respond with an elbow to her ribs and she laughs as she fits her own mask, and I put on mine. As one, we reach back and pull our hoods over our heads, with Sweetie and I tucking our hair back behind our collars. “So…” Scootaloo says through her vicious, painted grin. “Where to?” It takes us two more nights to find a good spot for our first try. The outer roads to Canterlot stretch out into the distance a long ways to the east, the west, and the south. There’s another road, though, on the other side of the mountain, carving up north, that not many people use, and up that road is a small convenience store and gas stop. It’s the last little bit of civilization you see before you get into the main mountain passes where it’s all woods and wilderness and deep, dark snow. The three of us come out of the woods from behind the place, hoods up and masks down. Of the three of us, Scootaloo is the quickest and the sharpest. She spent the last day and night watching the place from the trees. Memorizing the patterns. There are only three employees. Two in the day, and one at night. I’m pretty sure that’s some kinda violation. I remember someone once telling me you’re always supposed to have two folks working a gas stop at night. Y’know… in case it gets robbed. But I guess some people just don’t wanna pay that extra person, huh? Lucky me and lucky us. Unlucky them. “In and out,” I say as we move around the side of the building in the dark. “Ah ain’t stickin’ around for someone to swing by for gas on their way through the mountains.” “Two minutes, maybe three,” Scootaloo says quietly. “We get in, crack open the register, take the cash, and take off.” “What about the attendant?” I ask. “I’ll take care of it,” Sweetie says softly. Scootaloo and I both look over at her. Her expression is that same odd, hollow look as we crouch down in the snow near the lone dumpster along the side of the gas stop. “Okay,” I say quietly. “Weapons?” I reach into my jacket and tighten my hand around the grip of the hunting knife I’d tied under my arm and pull it free with an oiled whisper. Scootaloo draws out her keyhole saw from her pocket and nods. We both look over at Sweetie Belle, who— “What the fuck is that?” Scootaloo blurts. I don’t say anything but I can’t help but quietly agree with the sentiment. Sweetie Belle isn’t gripping a weapon so much as it is some kind of torture implement, and it takes me a second to recognise what it even is. It’s an old metal school ruler. The bottom third is wrapped in duct tape where she’s gripping it, while the top quarter has been carved at and sharpened into something like a stake. There are a half-dozen or more heavy sewing needles taped to it that stick out at odd angles that would prick, rip, and tear at any skin it touches if you were to actually cut someone with the thing. My stomach lurches as I realise the tip of the tool is already stained faintly rust-brown, and as I glance at Scootaloo I see her come to the same conclusion that I just did. “Hey, uh… S-Sweetie, is tha—urk!” I cut Scootaloo off with an elbow to the gut and shoot her a glare. She gives me a silent, apologetic grimace before shaking her head and looking back up at Sweetie Belle. “Okay, smash and grab?” Scootaloo asks. “Smash and grab,” I repeat, and Sweetie nods. Masked, gloved, and silent, the three of us pull our hoods up as we stand and walk around the corner to the front of the shop. My heart is my throat and my stomach is in knots. The sweat on my palms is making my grip slick on my knife, and I keep having to wipe my hands on my jacket. “Three,” I say as we reach the door. “Two,” Scootaloo chimes in as she shoves it open, prompting the jingle of the brass bell atop the door. “One.” Sweetie Belle bolts past both of us as she hisses the word out. She moves in a flash of violent motion and the attendant barely has time to look up with a sleepy, rote greeting dying on his tongue as his eyes go wide for a brief second at the sight of Sweetie’s shattered mask before she vaults the counter and plants two booted feet in the poor guy’s gut. The air leaves him in a soundless wheeze as Sweetie bears him to the ground, slamming him against the floor and putting the tip of her weapon to his throat. “Hi~” The voice that comes out from under her mask sounds only superficially like the girl who makes my heart beat faster, and it sends a chill up my spine. “Shit, S—” Scootaloo clamps her mouth shut before she blurts out Sweetie’s name, and amends herself—“Fucking relax!” I keep my mouth shut as I vault the counter too and land, jam my knife into the space between the till and the cash drawer, and jerk hard. Something snaps inside the machine and it pops open with a tinny clang. I don’t bother to count the cash inside, I just grab everything. Scootaloo sweeps around and opens a small bag and in go rolled up clumps of bills, fistfuls of change, and someone’s credit card they probably left in the gas reader. I lift the drawer and grab a few more stray bills, toss them into the bag, then drop it and vault back over the counter. “C’mon! Let’s go!” Scootaloo snaps at Sweetie before bolting out the door with the cash. I turn back to Sweetie, and she looks up, giggles, then looks back down at the terrified attendant before leaning in close. “Sshh,” Sweetie coos. “Or I’ll cut you.” He yelps as she pricks his cheek, then she grabs him by the forehead and slams the back of his head into the ground hard, before scrambling to her feet and hurtling over the counter to barrel out the door. I spare a glance for the stunned attendant, cuss under my breath, then bolt for the outside. Sweetie Belle is right behind me and she’s laughing. I haven’t heard her laugh like this since before Anon-A-Miss and the Trials, and as weird as she was acting in the gas stop, the sound of her laughter? Entirely worth it. We sprint into the woods, up through the foothills that wind and climb through the mountains. Even if they went looking for us here right away, rather than along the road like a sane person, they’d never find us. It’s winter in Canterlot and the snow comes down like god dumped it clean out of a trough. Within hours our tracks will be covered. In a day it’ll be like were never here. All three of us are laughing over an hour later as we stumble into the grounds of Ormond, red-faced, sweaty, and high on adrenaline. I’m so warm right now I don’t even need a fire, but we grab a few logs on our way into the main lodge anyway. “That was nuts!” Scootaloo groans as she slumps onto the mattress still clutching the bag of cash. “We actually did it!” “Mah sister’s gonna kill me,” I mutter as I drop down to sit beside her. Sweetie just sidles in silently against me and rests her head on my shoulder as I reach up to pry the mask off my face. I gasp at the shock of cold air that hits my lungs. I hadn’t realised how hard I’d been breathing til now, and the mask was good, but it weren’t exactly made for common usage. “Only if we get caught,” Scootaloo says as she sits up and pops her own mask off. “And we’ll only get caught if we get stupid… speaking which, hey Sweetie? What the hell was that?” She doesn’t answer right away. Instead she turns to face Scootaloo and cocks her head quizzically. Her face is still hidden behind her shattered and unsettling mask. “What do you mean?” Her voice comes out slightly tinny. Frantic, almost. “That poor attendant,” I say, gesturing back towards the forest we came from. “Poor fella’s just workin’ his nine-ta-five, y’all didn’t have to body’im like that.” Sweetie draws back a little, then shrugs. “I didn’t really hurt him,” she says, giggling. The noise sounds weirdly distorted and hollow coming from under the mask, and on an impulse I snap out a hand and yank the mask off of her face. I get a brief glimpse of Sweetie’s expression going slack with shock, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks, and the blood draining from her features, before her whole face contorts in rage and she lets out a high, raw shriek. “MINE!” Sweetie lunges at me, and at the mask, with her fingers curled into rabid claws, and she hits me like a bronco, carrying me straight off the mattress and down onto the cold stone floor of Ormond Lodge as she straddles me with her fingers wrapped around me neck. “GIVE IT BACK!” Her voice cracks and breaks as she screams. The mask isn’t even in my hands anymore, it’s tumbled out of numb fingers as I grasp and scrabble at Sweetie’s hands. She’s so insanely strong. Her grip is completely solid; no amount of prying at her fingers gives me purchase, and my vision starts to narrow to a dark tunnel. “GIVE IT—hurk!” Her weight vanishes from me and I gasp for air, dragging gulps of it down my abused throat as I massage my neck and sit up, coughing and hacking for all I’m worth. “What the FUCK, Sweetie?!” Scootaloo snarls as she drags Sweetie Belle backward. She has Sweetie in a standing rear triangle choke, like something out of one of those MMA fights Mac watches. Sweetie is kicking and thrashing like a mad horse, but only for a moment. Slowly, the fight drains out of her, until finally she’s hanging slack in Scootaloo’s grip and making small wheezing noises. “Let’er go, Scoots!” I snap as I stand on shaky legs. My vision swims as Scootaloo gives me a look like I’ve lost my mind, but I fix her with a good glare. “Scoots.” My voice rumbles low as I advance on them. “Ah said y’all let’er go!” She grimaces, but nods as she releases her hold, and Sweetie topples down onto the mattress coughing, and a moment later she’s curling up in a ball and sobbing. “Bloom…” Scootaloo starts. “Ah don’t wanna hear it,” I say, shaking my head as I walk over to Sweetie and sit down beside her before wrapping my arms around her. “We’re talking about this,” Scootaloo says. I don’t argue. Ain’t no point in it. When Scootaloo gets a bug up her ass about something she ain’t the type to let it go, and frankly, I don’t think she’ll be happy til we do talk about this. She’s probably right anyhow. “I’m sorry,” Sweetie sobs. “I’m sorry I… I don’t know what happened!” “S’okay, Ah ain’t mad,” I say quietly. That said, I don’t think I can say the same of Scootaloo. From the look on her face I can’t tell if she’s mad or just scared. Little bit of both is probably right, and in fairness I don’t think either of us have ever seen Sweetie freak out like that before. Scootaloo kneels after a moment and puts a hand on Sweetie’s shoulder while looking at me cautiously. I mouth the word ‘later’ at her, and she grimaces, but nods. I don’t know why these two still trust me after all the crap I’ve gotten them into but they do. Best I can do now is look after them, for whatever good that does. So I hold onto Sweetie Belle while she cries herself out. If anything, it seems like she’s more scared than either of us of what happened. She crashes an hour later, and I have to extract myself from her grip to lay her down on the mattress before tossing a couple of the blankets over her. My joints pop as I stretch to get the blood flowing again. Even despite the fire I know that it’s freezing out, but the cold still doesn’t touch me, and I nod to Scootaloo as I walk past her. She’s up and following me a moment later, her eyes settle right on the back of my neck as we walk out into the icy grounds of Ormond. Snow is thick on the ground, and more is falling in heavy clumps as we find a clear spot beneath and awning and sit down. Scootaloo reaches into her pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes, still wrapped in plastic, and I frown. “When’d y’all start smokin’?” She doesn’t answer. She just peels the plastic off the pack, pops the top, pulls away the aluminium wrapping, and nudges out one of the sticks before taking between her lips. Scootaloo stuffs the pack back into her front hoodie pocket, and when her hand comes back out it’s holding a cheap plastic lighter that she flicks a few times before lighting the cigarette. The moment Scootaloo takes a breath she starts hacking and coughing, then she spits, breathes in, and does it again. “Five”—cough, cough—“seconds ago.” She hacks the words out like a bad lung, before settling in and puffing on the cigarette a little more sedately, coughing every so often between drags. “We ain’t eighteen,” I say. “We just robbed a bodega.” I don’t really have an argument for that one, so I let it lie. Instead, I settle in beside her and stare up at the snow-shrouded night sky and track the drifting snow. “How much we make?” Scootaloo shrugs, then tucks the cigarette back between her lips before pulling out a bundle of cash from her hoodie pocket. She passes the roll of bills to me. “It’s like, three hundred and some.” The roll is bound with a thick blue rubber band that I pull off. The bills are all different ages, some are new, but most are heavily worn and wrinkled, and I smooth them out as I count. Scoots hadn’t bothered to sort them so it takes me a bit, but eventually I roll them back up and rubberband them again. “Three hundred’n forty-seven bucks,” I say quietly. “Plus whatever loose change y’all got left.” “Couple rolls of quarters,” Scootaloo replies. “Nowhere near enough t’get outta here,” I say. “Nope.” “Guess we gotta do it again, huh?” I say. Scootaloo looks over at me, her eyes flashing strangely in the dark and her face lit only by the ember of her stolen cigarette as it slowly works its way closer to the filter. We’ve been friends long enough that I don’t need to ask her what she’s thinking. I can see written plain as day over her bruised eyes and cheeks. How did we end up here? How did it come to this? The answer to that one is easy: me. “As many times as it takes, huh?” “Yeah.” I nod as I tuck away the money. “As many as it takes.”
What Is Thy NameOver the course of the next month, we get better and better at hitting places. They’re all gas stations or bodegas—same as the first—around the city outskirts of Canterlot. We kept it random after our first hit, Sweetie pointed out that we couldn’t hit places around Ormond too often otherwise the cops would get suspicious. Even if most of the city forgot the old almost-resort existed, someone somewhere is gonna put two and two together and remember there’s a place way up in the mountains where some enterprising bandits might be holing up. The takes were always crap though. A few hundred dollars each, and we burned through some of that keeping Scootaloo safe since she couldn’t go back home. Sweetie and I took turns buying food and ferrying it up to the lodge but we couldn’t bring her anything too perishable on account of not having electricity. “I’m telling you guys, I’m fine,” Scootaloo says grimly as we settle in around the fire. “Liar,” I say and I don’t have the energy to make it sound playful. “This shit ain’t workin’.” Scootaloo scowls at me but she doesn’t argue the point since we all know it’s true, and grudgingly takes a bowl of soup Sweetie warmed over the fire pit and tucks into it. I take one too and start eating. It’s slow and mechanical, lately all food tastes like ashes even when we’re all together, but a body’s gotta eat, so we all trudge through it. “We… We could hit a bigger place,” Sweetie says quietly before taking a bite. I look up at her, then over to Scootaloo, and to my surprise, I don’t see any fight on her face over the subject. Maybe that’s because we all knew it had to happen eventually. The little places we’ve been knocking over for the past month were easy but weren’t what you’d call lucrative, and on the last one we’d only barely made it away from before the cops showed up. Weren’t worth the couple hundred we got out of it, frankly speaking. Sweetie takes her spot beside and between the two of us, her mask cradled in her hands. “We could do it,” she says gently. She’s right. We probably could. It’d be riskier than anything else we’ve done, but we could do it. Whether we get away clean or not is the big question. Up to this point, we’ve been managing with scaring the daylights out of the clerks at the various bodegas and such we’ve been hitting, but it only works out because they’re usually alone and isolated. In short, we ain’t had to hurt anyone too bad… a couple of bruises here and there, but nothing worse than a bloody nose. A bigger target with more cash on hand, though? That’s gonna be in the city proper, and that means we could run into any number of problems, and honestly… Honestly, I don’t know if I trust Sweetie to hold it together that long. But the worst of it is that that’s the same reason I’m really considering it. “Where’d ya have in mind?” I ask around a mouthful of cheap beef stew. Sweetie looks up at the both of us with an odd gleam in her eyes, and her hands tighten around her mask like she’s itching to put it on. “The Crystal Emporium.” Beef stew splatters against my face. “Aw c’mon, Scoots!” I groan, as I wipe away bits of food. “ARE YOU INSANE?!” Scootaloo gawps at Sweetie Belle, her lips still stained with brown broth from her spit-take. “The Emporium?!” “W-Well, not the whole thing,” Sweetie replies, shifting awkwardly on the mattress. “But… the mall security is pretty lazy, and the employees all break the security rules all the time by propping rear doors open when they go out to smoke and stuff.” “And it’s in the middle of Canterlot!” Scootaloo puts her bowl down and gives Sweetie Belle a hard look, but I speak up before she has a chance to continue. “Sweetie’s right,” I say softly, my mind doing cartwheels as I mull of her proposition. “Ah mean, y’all ain’t wrong either, Scoots,” I say before she can argue, “but Sweetie’s got a point. The mall ain’t exactly aces when it comes to security, and with how fast we are it’d be pretty easy to get in or out… once.” It is crazy, but it’s also viable which scares me. “No,” Scootaloo says sharply, slashing the air with her hand. “No way are we actually considering this, right? Bust open the Crystal Emporium and rob… what?” “Diamond Imports.” Now it’s both our turns to stare slack-jawed at Sweetie’s instant answer. Diamond Imports. The high-end jewelry store is on the upper level along with all the fancy-schmancy clothing boutiques that Rarity is always going gaga over, so I’ve seen it plenty of times. It’s huge, and moreover it’s owned by one ‘Filthy Rich’, something that Diamond Tiara never shuts up about. It’s why her family has so much money. Of course, making money in a place as ‘crude’ as a public mall ain’t exactly classy enough for this town’s elite, which I guess is why she ain’t going to Crystal Prep. If she did, she’d be miserable because she might actually be poorer than everyone else. As it is, she’s easily the richest girl at CHS, and she and her little clique of stuck-up snobs have spent the last year making our lives a living hell like it’s their job. All danger aside, the concept of smashing into her dad’s shop and robbing her blind definitely tickles my fancy. “That’s nuts,” Scootaloo says flatly. “Imports has gotta be one of the best protected stores in the mall.” I shrug at that. “Not like their security can be all that different from any’a the department stores,” I say. “Ain’t like they own the building or anythin’.” “Are you serious?!” Scootaloo meets my eyes but I don’t back down. “We could hit any place in the mall and make bank if that’s our plan, but… look I don’t like that snobby little prig anymore than you girls, but this is crazy.” “Nowhere else has that kind of cash,” Sweetie says. “They buy and sell, remember? That means they’ve got to have cash on hand, and lots of it.” Both of us stare at Sweetie again but this time for a more positive reason. “That’s… actually true,” Scootaloo admits cautiously. “Yeah,” I say, chewing it over along with stew. “That’s right, even jewelry aside, if we get into their cash… but you think they keep it in a safe?” “They do.” I look up at Sweetie and Scootaloo follows me. More and more this is starting to put a tickle down my spine in a way I ain’t fond of. “Sweetie…” I start. “Have you been casin’ Imports?” She doesn’t look up from her mask. Sweetie Belle makes a small, thoughtful hum, then nods wordlessly. I shouldn’t be surprised. Sweetie is sharp as a tack. Way smarter than me, as if that needed to be said, so if she’d already cased the shop and was putting her idea in the hat, then that meant… “You got a plan?” She nods. “Tuesday’s they have the smallest number of people working,” Sweetie says, turning her mask over and over in her hands as she speaks. “Most nights they have four closers, but Tuesday they only have three.” “Makes sense,” Scootaloo says. “Middle of the week is always the slowest time at the mall, so I guess ol’ Rich is trying to save on payroll.” “And it’ll cost’im,” I reply as a faint smile finds its way onto my face. Sweetie nods, her lips curving up slightly as she looks up hopefully at the pair of us. Most likely, she hadn’t expected us to really go in for it, but the more I heard the more I thought we might actually be able to pull this off. We’re faster and stronger than most people, regardless of our size. We can run for hours, heal crazy quick, and don’t need light to see—or at least not much—so we don’t have to bring in anything but what we need to get in and out. “One closer always leaves a little early,” Sweetie continues, “because they take out the trash and recycling to the dumpsters.” “What about the other two?” I ask. Sweetie Belle pauses in fidgeting with her mask and looks up at us. “They come out about twenty minutes later or so… but if we’re fast, we can get into the halls and hide there, wait for the others to come out, and then jump them.” Silence settles over the three of us at Sweetie’s last two words, and I have to rewind my brain a little to go over what I just heard. “We… what?” I say. I’m positive I didn’t hear that right. “You’re joking, right?” Scootaloo asks with a brittle laugh. Sweetie shakes her head, if anything she looks confused as to why we don’t understand, and it hits me just as she starts speaking again. “We need the closer’s keys,” Sweetie says. “Otherwise we won’t be able to get into the back lockup, and we need the code to get into the safe.” The notion puts an ice cube into my stomach, but at the same time I can’t really argue with Sweetie’s logic. Even if we get into the place we won’t be able to get any of the money or jewelry unless we can get to it, and even if we’re stronger than normal people, we’re not ‘break through a steel door’ strong. “Shit.” Scootaloo sums up my feelings on the matter pretty succinctly, and I nod, but I don’t argue the point with Sweetie either because she’s right. If we are going to hit Diamond Imports, then we need to get the keys and the code. “If we jump them,” I start, trying to parse out the rest of the plan, “what’s to stop’em from lyin’ about the code?” “Nothing,” Sweetie replies. “That’s why we take them with us and leave them in the back. They’ll be fine, the opener has keys too, so they’ll only be there overnight.” Well, I hate that idea, but I don’t see a better option. “This is nuts,” Scootaloo says as she stares down at her bowl. “But it’ll work,” I say. Scootaloo cusses under her breath, shakes her head, and tosses her bowl onto the mattress, then stands up sharply and storms out of the lodge and into the snow. Sweetie starts to stand but I put a hand out, catching her shoulder and pushing her back. “Don’t,” I say. “Ah’ll talk to’er a’right? Y’all ain’t done nothin’ wrong, she’s just sore ‘bout this whole thing.” “I don’t want us to fight,” Sweetie says weakly. “I just… I just want to be with you two forever, okay?” “Ah know,” I say. I lean in and pull her into a hug, and she wraps her arms around me and clings to me tightly. It’s a good feeling, but not all the way. There’s a poison between all of us now thanks to me, and it’s all we can do some days to cling to each other despite it. “I love you girls,” Sweetie sobs softly against the shoulder of my jacket. “Ah love ya too, Sweets,” I reply. Standing up from the mattress, I turn to track Scootaloo out of the main lodge. It’s not hard. The snow falls perpetually up on Mount Ormond so her tracks are plain as day to see. I follow her through the ruined wooden partitions and around the little outcroppings of rock until I reach a small hill, where a tall, unpowered stand of floodlights rises up, the metal rusted and the bulbs long-since burnt out. Scootaloo is sitting at the base of the floodlights and staring out over the forest. “Hey.” She turns to regard me for a moment, then turns back to the forest without saying a word, so I join her, sitting down in the snow beside her. It’s funny. It’s gotta be freezing out here, but I don’t even feel it. “You alright?” Scootaloo chuckles darkly, then shakes her head. “Are you?” She asks. “We’re talking about kidnapping someone.” “Only a little bit,” I say weakly. “S’not like we’re aimin’ to hurt’em or anythin’.” At least I hope not. I don’t plan to but at the same time, I have no idea how this is going to go down. Ain’t like I’ve ever done anything like this before, so I’m basically making it up as I go. “You really think they’re gonna just tell us the code?” Scootaloo asks. I shrug. “Ain’t like they got any stake in it. Ah figure all we gotta do is put a big enough scare in’em and they’ll talk, then we get the money and get out.” Rather than answer, Scootaloo just snorts and narrows her eyes at the fading treeline. It’s getting dark and soon the shadows will swallow up the forest, but that sort of thing doesn’t matter to us three. Not anymore anyway. “Something’s wrong with us,” Scootaloo says finally. “Yeah, Ah know,” I say softly. “S’why we gotta do this…” “It’s those fuckin’ masks, Bloom,” Scootaloo says, turning to look at me with a deep scowl. “They’re doing something to Sweetie! And to all of us! We’re going crazy and you know it!” “Ain’t the masks,” I reply quietly, and Scootaloo clams up. She doesn’t argue though. Sweetie may go berserk under the mask but I lose it too and I ain’t got no excuse like that. In fact, the only who ain’t losing her head regular-like is Scootaloo for whatever reason. Maybe because she’s the more grounded of us? I can’t say one way or the other, all I know is that Sweetie ain’t fallin’ off the cliff alone. She’s pitching down faster than either of us, sure, but I’m on my way down too, and I figure if Sweetie’s going down, and I’m going down, then eventually Scootaloo is going to take that same plunge too if she ain’t already. Just a matter of time, then, before we hit rock bottom. “We gotta get out of this place, Scoots,” I say hollowly. “It’s killin’ us… maybe not dead-like, but it’s takin’ something out of us that we need, just like when—” “—Don’t fuckin’ say it,” Scootaloo snarls. I don’t. That’s alright though. I didn’t really want to say it. It’s the one thing none of us talk about: what happened after we got put up on the butcher’s hooks in Sunset’s Trial. We don’t talk about what happened in the dark when that thing got its claws on us. We don’t talk about the way it took us apart and peeled things out of us. Now I’m shivering, but ain’t got nothing to do with the cold. “We gotta get outta here,” I repeat. “And if this goes off… we could get out right after.” “And if it goes wrong?” I smile wanly at that. She says it like every ain’t already gone about as wrong as it can go. Our families hate us. Sweetie is tearing herself apart. Scootaloo’s dad tried to put her in the ground. I don’t say any of that either though. Guess now is as good a time as any to learn to keep my dang mouth shut. It’s a shame it took ruining so many lives to teach me how to do it. “Then we try again,” I say. “And again and again, til all three’a us can walk outta this city together.” Scootaloo reaches into her jacket and draws out the mask with its painted rictus grin and daubed eyes, and stares down at it. She runs her hand over the smooth surface, and her face hardens a touch before she finally looks back up at me. “No matter the cost?” I give as good of a smile as I can, and ain’t it just a pathetic looking thing? “Ayup.” “Ah got eyes on’er.” I look back at Scootaloo who’s crouching behind me by the dumpster and nod at the corner. The one coming out is a girl about my sister’s age toting a couple of bags of garbage and some broken-down cardboard boxes. She’s got short, fashionably cut hair, a perfect pale green complexion, and is dressed to the nines in exactly the kind of blouse-and-skirt outfit you’d expect a young pretty thing to be wearing at work in a jewelry shop. Scootaloo nods and pulls her hood over her head, and I do the same. She props open the door with one of the garbage bags, which I happen to know you ain’t supposed to do, but everyone does it anyway. Otherwise, you’d need two people to ferry out a few bags of trash and ain’t no one got that kinda time. She grabs two bags and walks over to the trash compactors, and the moments she tosses them in, Scoots and I bolt for the door. What little sound we make is covered by the crash of trash as garbage-girl throws the bags into the maw of the compactor, and between that and our speed, it buys us the time we need to get into the blank halls that run through the guts of the Crystal Emporium. We move fast and quiet as we can, and the whole time I’m praying there’s no one else inside, or else this is gonna turn into a fight. To my luck and mild surprise, we get inside without a problem. We get through the door, down a hall, and around a corner all before garbage-girl grabs the last of the trash and cardboard, and the door clinks shut behind her. Now we just gotta wait for Sweetie Belle, and as it happens we don’t wait long. Ten minutes after garbage-girl takes off, a quiet couple of knocks comes at the door, and I crack it open just enough to peek outside. Sweetie Belle is standing in the dull light of the single lamp set over the door, her pale face washed grey by the fluorescent bulb. “The front is all closed up,” she says quietly. “They lowered the metal shutters a few minutes ago, and they’ll probably be coming up here in a bit.” I nod and nudge the door open to let her through, then slowly ease it shut. I don’t know if there’s anyone else in these halls right now, and I don’t even know if the sound of the door would carry, but right now my nerves are on fire and every noise sounds like a clap of thunder. “Keep yer eyes peeled an’ yer ears open, girls,” I hiss. “Last thing we need is someone sneakin’ up on us.” They both give silent nods, and as one we all draw out our masks and slip them on. A change comes over us in that moment, and it’s been getting more and more obvious as the days and weeks go by. When we put on the masks, something shifts between the three of us. Something connects us more deeply than before. It’s like every breath I take is echoed by Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle, and every one of their breaths is echoed in me. I can feel Sweetie’s pulse pounding and Scootaloo’s heart racing. I can feel them tensing and relaxing as we count the seconds. Every flex of every muscle in one of us ripples through the rest, almost like we ain’t even three different people anymore. This is why Sweetie is always so reluctant to take the mask off, I think. It’s like cutting a finger off because suddenly you lose it all the moment you’re free to breathe clean air. “Here they come,” Sweetie says in her high, shrill masked voice. I nod. I can hear them. Footsteps in the distance, echoing through the cold concrete floor of the halls. We move as one, hyper-aware of one another as we shift about and position ourselves at the neck of a T-section. Moments later the footsteps are eclipsed by the murmur of faint, casual conversation. My heart is pounding, deafening me. I know they’re talking—probably about something inane—but I can’t focus on any of the words long enough to figure out what the conversation is even about. Not that it matters. The two girls appear from around the corner. One is short and slight, kind of petite in the same way Sweetie Belle is if she were older, with wavy brown-and-green hair, and pretty freckles over an oaky complexion. She’s wearing the same blouse-and-skirt outfit as garbage-girl and as the taller, willowy girl beside her. She’s a head-and-a-half taller than her coworker with long blonde hair streaked with soft mauve, and a pair of wide, round glasses are perched on her slender nose. That’s the one who spots us, although by that point we ain’t trying to hide. All three of us are standing shoulder-to-shoulder; weapons out, masks on, and hoods up, and their conversation dies with a weak rattle as Scootaloo moves to from left to cut off their escape back the way they came, and Sweetie moves from my right to block the path to the exit. “Scream’n yer dead.” The words come out on the rasp of a blade as I hold up my hunter’s knife, and the scream that had been building up in the back of the short one’s throat dies an ignoble death somewhere near her tonsils. Sweetie’s shrill, tinny giggles echo quietly around the halls as I take a step forward and glance between the two. “We’re going back,” Scootaloo says grimly, her voice a tight, strained snarl. “You’re going to open the back lockup, and then the safe, then we’re leaving.” “G-Ginger…” The short one flails blindly for the tall one’s hand before finding it and grabbing tight. “I’m right here, Tawny,” the tall one—Ginger—replies weakly, squeezing her co-worker’s hand. “I’m right here.” She starts to look down at Tawny, but before she can move her head more than an inch I dart forward, catch her cheek with the cold flat of my blade, and force her to turn her head back. “Don’t look’t her,” I say. “Y’all look at me.” “Keys~ Keys~ who’s got the Keys~?” Sweetie’s words are an atonal sing-song melody that puts a chill down my spine and does worse to the two girls. “M-Me,” Ginger says in a brittle voice. “I… I’m the night manager, Tawny is just my closing help, she doesn’t know any of the codes, so just… just let her go, please?” “Awww…” Sweetie steps forward, leans in, and takes a deep breath. “How sweet.” Tawny has started crying, and I know I should feel something—anything—over it but I don’t. Not good, not bad, not anything. There’s just a dim kinda cold like the snows of Mount Ormond settling over my soul. Scootaloo steps forward and takes a deep, ragged breath. “Their smells are all over each other… guess there’s another reason garbage-girl leaves first.” Tawny’s and Ginger’s eyes widen as the color drains from their faces, and beneath my mask, my smile stretches to match the plaster grin I’m wearing as I pull the knife away from Ginger’s cheek and look down at Tawny. “S-Stop!” Ginger moves between me and the shorter girl. “Don’t… Don’t! I’ve got the codes and the keys okay!” My mind is buzzing with the communal sensations of Sweetie and Scootaloo. I can feel Scootaloo’s frustration and rage bubbling out of her chest and up her throat, and Sweetie’s tinny, narcotic glee that’s setting her limbs vibrating. It’s washing everything else out of my brain and like every other time we wear the masks it finally feels like the world isn’t trying to crush us in a vice. It feels good. “Grab shorty,” I snap as I seize Ginger roughly by the arm. She barely suppresses a scream, which is good. If she’d screamed I don’t know what would happen. I know Sweetie would probably do something stupid, assuming I didn’t do the same. Of course, I had no intention of actually going through with the threat I made. I’d only said it because it seemed like the sorta thing I oughta say. The problem is, we’re what you’d call committed at this point, and if they do scream I ain’t sure I’ll have many other options. Somewhere under the crowded feelings from the others, I know that that should bother me more than it does. I press the tip of my knife to Ginger’s back to force her forward while Sweetie and Scootaloo get on either side of Tawny and grab her by her arms to drag her along with us. Her blubbering is starting to get on my last nerve and it’s made worse by the tarry anger welling out of Scootaloo. Thankfully, Sweetie’s perpetual glee is counteracting it a little, even if it’s unsettling for different reasons. Thankfully, we make it to the back door of Diamond Imports without any other issues, and Ginger draws out a ring of keys, fits one shakily to the lock, and opens it up. Both of the girls are shaking and terrified, and tears streak their once perfectly made-up faces. “Move.” I give Ginger another painful jab and she lets out a strangled cry as she stumbles forward into the darkened jewelry shop. “I… I can’t see,” Ginger says. “I need to turn on a—” “Touch the light and shorty loses a finger,” Scootaloo snarls. Both of them freeze and go silent other than the soft, sobbing still coming from Tawny, and in the darkness Ginger nods faintly before making a small, choking noise of affirmation. I really hope she doesn’t mean that, but when the masks are on it’s a lot harder to tell. “It’s okay~” Sweetie coos as she steps between the four of us, friends and hostages, “I know the way, alright?” Her tone is light and cheerful and almost like it was before all the bad times came down on us, and Sweetie leans forward to playfully bop the face of her mask against mine before giggling and turning to Ginger, pulling out that ugly metal ruler with its sharpened point and welded needles—“Eenie meenie minie moe~, catch a squealer by the nose~”—and sticking the point up Ginger’s left nostril—“if she screams then cut the hoe, eenie meenie minie moe~” Ginger makes a strangled cry that’s cut off by Sweetie’s hand closing around her throat as she leans in close to the taller girl. “We’re gonna go to the back lockup, okay~?” Sweetie titters breathlessly. “Just follow me~e, unless you wanna leave your nose behind.” “Hey!” I snap. “Relax.” In spite of the mask, I can practically see the exaggerated moue Sweetie gives me as she eases up her grip before, leads the way with Ginger silently weeping behind her, I take up position on the other side of Tawny with Scootaloo, dragging the short girl along with us in their wake. True to her word, Sweetie leads us straight to the back lockup of Diamond Imports; crazy or not, her mind is still there somewhere, along with her memory and all the smarts I fell for, and she pulls back her ruler, its tip stained slightly with blood, and throws Ginger roughly forward. “Unlock it, would you kindly?” Sweetie asks with a deadly softness to her voice. The young closer doesn’t move immediately, except to look up at us and at Tawny between us with eyes so wide they seem almost bleached white in the darkness, and Sweetie cocks her head curiously to the side before raising her ruler up, achingly slowly, until the tip is pressed hard against Tawny’s jugular. “Please?” Ginger dry swallows and nods, then turns to fit another key to the back lockup. “Hope there ain’t no alarm that goes off when ya open that,” I say conversationally as I walk up beside her. “Ah’d hate t’hafta to do something about it.” “I can turn it off,” she croaks as she releases the lock and pulls the door open. Sure enough, a quiet beeping starts up and begins to climb in intensity. I jerk my head at the small security pad on the wall across from the door and she stumbles over to it, pops open the keypad, and punches in a code with trembling fingers. “Now the safe,” Scootaloo says as she prods Tawny into the room, and Sweetie laughs that weird, high titter she gets when she’s under the mask. “Would you cut that out?” Scootaloo shoots an invisible glare at Sweetie who just laughs louder. “Sorry!” She chirps, her voice cracking. “It’s just funny! See the safe is safe, but they’re not safe, and they’ll only be safe when the safe’s not safe!” “That’s not funny that’s stupid,” Scootaloo grumbles. Sweetie Belle blows a raspberry at her before turning to me and draping herself over me, all while fixing her shattered gaze on the two girls who are trembling in their designer boots. Ginger is kneeling in front of two safes, a large one set into the wall, and a smaller one set into a section of metal counter. “Why are you working on the small one first?” Sweetie asks, all humor gone from her voice and replaced with cold metal. Ginger pauses, swallows audibly, then turns her head to look at us. “I… I don’t have any of the codes to the master safe,” she says plaintively. “Only Mister Rich can get into it.” “Bullshit!” Scootaloo growls. “Ain’t bullshit,” I say, stepping between them and Scootaloo. “They ain’t lyin’, and you can tell just like Ah can, so we’ll take the little shit, the jewels, and then git, got it?” “Tch.” Scootaloo clicks her tongue but nods. Turning back to Ginger I gesture vaguely with my knife at the safe. “Better get back to it,” I say. “Ain’t got all night.” “R-Right.” While she works, I look around and spot an old security recording setup, old CCTV style, and I smirk. Filthy Rich is a cheap bastard, I guess. While Scootaloo broods near the lockup door and keeps a watch, and Sweetie lurks near Tawny, alternating between being gentle and cajoling, and tormenting her with threats and prods with her makeshift blade, I tear the security setup free and destroy as much of the internal systems as I can. No sense taking chances, and it’d take a miracle to recover anything from these tapes now. Behind me, the safe makes a soft click and pop as it cracks open and I turn, toss Ginger a burlap bag we’d brought from Ormond, and direct her to start clearing it out. “Here,” Ginger says, turning to pass us the bag we’d brought. As I reach out to take it, I hesitate. I can’t say why, but something is wrong. My ears are ringing. It’s like the barest hint of tinnitus in the deepest parts of my ears, and I lower my hand as I try to focus on it. “Is s-something wrong?” Something is wrong. I can hear it in her voice. In the sweat-stink of her fear. Her smell is different, she knows something and— “You guys hear that?” Scootaloo asks, turning to me as she gives the side of her head a couple of solid whacks. Cold sluices down my spine and freezes in my gut. “A silent alarm.” The instant the words are out of my mouth I can feel it. “YOU BITCH!” I snap. Ginger is so slow it’s like she’s a punching bag in a gym, and my fist collides with her face, shatters her glasses, and sends her flying backward an arms length into the metal wall. The wall dents, and she drops bonelessly to the ground. Tawny screams something—Ginger’s name probably—but I don’t hear it, the pounding in my ears is too loud as I dive for the small safe, practically sticking my inside it, and spot what I’m looking for. A button is set into the interior of the safe and there’s no killswitch. Just the button and then the owner probably has to shut it off themselves! “Shit!” I pull myself out of the safe and turn to see Sweetie Belle straddling Tawny and beating her to a grim paste. We don’t have time for this. I storm over to her, grab her by the scruff of the neck, and rip her off the girl. I barely spare them a glance, we have to get the fuck outta Dodge Junction or we’re done for. Besides, the brief look at them both that I do get tells me that if they wake up—and that’s a big if—it’ll probably be in traction. Hopefully, it’s bad enough they don’t remember much of us, but I can’t count on it. “Stop.” I freeze at Scootaloo’s tone. She’s standing stock still in the door to the lock-up with a fist raised. Then she gestures for us to get low as she crouches, and I follow suit. It only takes a moment before our senses sync up again. There’s someone out there now. There’s movement and snaps of a flashlight. We’re not alone anymore, and it’s probably only luck and the thick walls of the lockup that kept them from hearing Sweetie rearranging Tawny’s face. “How many?” I ask, sidling up to Scootaloo. “One rent-a-cop.” She gestures out and I follow her finger to the security guard who’s now just gotten inside the Import shop. “This is bad.” I shoot a glance at Scootaloo, then Sweetie, then the two unconscious Import employees behind us. “The cops have to be on their way, we gotta get the fuck outta here.” The security guard is halfway into the shop now, his flashlight crisscrossing the display room as he scans the area around him. His movements are sloppy and lazy; it’s like he’s barely checked in and to be fair he probably is. He’s probably expecting a false alarm because some newbie employee didn’t set the timer right or something. He isn’t expecting three girls in masks with knives to be robbing the place. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. “Rush him.” I tense as I lean forward. “Knock him down. Knock him out. Run fer the back door, and beat feet.” Scootaloo shoots me a look that’s covered by the mask but delivers a thousand words worth of pissed-off. But she doesn’t argue. Sometimes I wish she would. In this case, though, we’ve got no other choice. If we run for the door, he’ll see us for sure, maybe follow us, he’ll definitely call in which way we go, though, and that’ll make things a thousand times harder. Maybe we don’t get out at all. “It’s him or us,” Sweetie hisses. I can feel her hand tighten in a white-knuckled grip around her metal ruler stake through the thing that connects us, just like I can feel Scootaloo do the same on the handle of her keyhole saw. It takes me a moment to realise my hand is doing the exact same thing on the grip of my hunting knife. “Go.” Keeping low, we bolt silently from the back lockup and immediately scatter around the shop. The display cases hide us as we move in sync like a pack of wolves around an isolated buck. We don’t have to talk. Each of us knows where the others. Sweetie and Scootaloo move around towards the main entrance of Diamond Imports while I make for the rear of it, putting the security guard between the three of us, and as soon as we’re in position, Sweetie scrapes her stake against one of the cases. The guard jumps and whirls. I can’t get a good look at him because of how bright the light is that he keeps up near his face, but he doesn’t look too big. I can probably bring him down if I jump him. And he has his back to me. It’s now or never. I bolt from around the case at his back, knife in hand and breathing hard, moving as fast as I can, trying to cross the short distance before he registers me. And I do. Or I should have. It should have been fine. Except the door to the lockup, which had been closing silently behind us, clicks loudly shut just as I get close enough, and the spins around to face me. That shouldn’t have mattered either though. It wouldn’t have, but he gets lucky—too goddamn lucky—and his flashlight slashes across me and the beam stops dead-center on my face. It’s like someone duct-taped a flashbang to my nose and set it off. Agony ten times worse than getting a meat hook through the shoulder jabs through my eyes like hot nails and I jerk back and shriek, clawing at my mask to try and get at the burning in my skull. My knife clatters to the ground and I’m vaguely aware of the guard screaming too. I must look like a nightmare, and if he was smart he’d have run. He doesn’t. BANG! Something takes me in the shoulder and kicks my unsteady feet out from under me, sending me spinning, blind and practically deaf, onto my stomach on the floor. I hear Sweetie Belle scream my name and the guard screams again, I flip over in time to see the guard whip around just as Sweetie barrels into him full force. I hear something crack, another gunshot, and then the guard’s scream cuts off with a spine-wrenching gurgle. My shoulder aches like a bitch as I get shakily to my feet. Sweetie is sitting on top of the guard panting and staring down, and the guard is twitching unpleasantly as I approach. “Sweetie?” Scootaloo’s voice comes out hollow as she steps in behind our friend to look down at her. “What… What the fuck did you just do?” With shaking hands, Sweetie Belle pulls off her mask. Blood smears the pale, steel-stitched thing as she lowers it and looks down at the guard who has Sweetie’s ruler stake buried messily in the meat of his neck. “I… I didn’t mean to,” Sweetie mumbles as tears start to well up in her eyes as she looks up at me. “He sh-shot you, and I th-thought he k-killed you.” Tears are running down her face, and I kneel down next to the guard, horror creeping into every inch of my soul as I pull my own mask off. “We, uh, we g-gotta stop the bleedin’,” I mumble. I start to reach for the stake, then stop. If I pull it out, he’ll just go faster, but if I don’t he’ll choke and die. “We can’t,” Scootaloo says as she pulls her own mask off. Her face is sallow and she looks like she’s gonna throw up, which makes two of us. “The… That wound is too deep, he needs an ambulance.” “Well he ain’t gettin’ one!” I snap. “I didn’t mean to,” Sweetie sobs. “I swear I didn’t mean it.” It’s funny. There ain’t even that much blood. Probably because the poor guy’s choking on it. It’s weird the stuff you remember when your world is falling apart. Water flows downhill. That’s what I keep thinking. He’s lying on his back with the stake stuck down, so there ain’t much blood because it’s all going down his throat. He’ll be dead in a minute or two, way too late for an ambulance. Way too late for anyone to help him. And it’ll be Sweetie Belle who killed him. Just Sweetie Belle. Slowly, I get up, walk over to my fallen knife, pick it up, and come back to kneel in front of the dying man and my crying friend. “Bloom?” Scootaloo’s tone is cold. “What are you doing?” “We can’t save’im,” I say quietly as I grip the hunting knife. “And it’s like the masks, right? Ah ain’t lettin’ Sweetie be the only one gettin’ goose egg, that’s all.” For once, it’s Scootaloo and Sweetie who are both staring at me in disbelief as I put my knife to the guard’s chest. He’s young. That’s the worst thing, I think. I ain’t got a good look at him before it all went down on account of the light, but he can’t be much better than twenty or so. Not all that much older than my sister and her friends. “Y’all don’t gotta,” I say, looking up at Scootaloo. “In fact… be better if ya didn’t.” I swallow hard and grip the hand of the knife with both hands, point down. “Shit.” Scootaloo drops to her knees and turns her keyhole saw over. “I’m not gonna let you fucking martyr yourself, ya dumbass.” “W-Wait,” Sweetie cries. “Don’t—!” Neither of us waits for her because it doesn’t matter. I drive my knife straight down into his chest just as Scootaloo jams her keyhole saw into his throat beside Sweetie’s stake. The guard jerks, twitches, then his last breath rattles out of him as he goes still. Now we really are murderers. The knife comes free with an ugly sucking sound, and I wipe it clean on his jacket while Scootaloo works her saw free of the man’s neck. Sweetie is still staring, horrified, but frankly, I ain’t got time to coddle her. “Now what?” Scootaloo asks as she looks up at me. Something’s gone out of her eyes. There was a light there before, I’m sure of it, even after we got outta the Trials there was something there that ain’t anymore. Just another one of my shit ideas. “We take’im back with us,” I say as I sheathe the knife. “Wrap him up a little and wipe the blood if ya can. Ah’ll carry him.” “All the way back to Ormond?” Scootaloo says incredulously. “Bullshit.” “S’gotta be done,” I say as I stand and lever Sweetie up and off the poor guy. “C’mere, Sweets, yer alright.” “I didn’t mean to.” “Ah know ya didn’t.” I use the sleeve of my jacket to wipe some of the tears and blood from her face as she stares straight forward. “It was an accident.” “Ah know.” “Let’s go,” Scootaloo says as she stands up from over the guy. Once his neck and chest are… plugged, is the best way I can say it... she hands off Sweetie’s ruler stake to her as she nods down at the corpse. Sweetie takes the weapon dumbly and clutches at it like it’s a parade baton as I move past her and kneel down to pick the body up and heft it over my shoulder. It’s funny. He ain’t as heavy as I expected. “The money?” Scootaloo asks as we head for the door, and I stop. “Fuck.” I look back at the closed lockup door. The bag is back there with the two girls, along with the keyring that would open the automatically locking door. “So we got nothing out of this,” Scootaloo says grimly. “Awesome.” There’s nothing else I can say. She’s right. This is a fucking mess. So we just keep moving, out the back and down the hall, and out into the rear of the Emporium by the dumpster. As soon as we get out I can hear sirens, but they’re all coming from one direction. “Mask up and run.” I nod towards the opposite end of the parking lot, We don our masks and bolt, moving as fast as possible. There’s a lot of snow and fog, fortunately, and it’s getting thicker. If we’re lucky it’ll cover our escape. Now, all we have to do is carry a whole dead body through half of Canterlot and climb a third of a mountain, all while not being seen. No problem. My only consolation is that if we do get caught it won’t just be Sweetie getting the murder rap. “There’s no way we’re getting out of this,” Scootaloo says. Like I need her to tell me that. “Still gotta try,” I reply. Granny didn’t raise no quitter. Then again, I doubt she figured she raised a murderer neither, but that’s neither here nor there. As we hit the end of the parking lot and drop down a narrow dirt incline, Sweetie reaches out and grabs both of us by the shoulders. “Do you guys smell that?” she asks softly. The three of us share a look, and I take a deep breath. “All I smell is this guy,” I say, shrugging the body. “Smells like blood—” “—and ashes.” Scootaloo’s words freeze me solid, and I look up from the dirt, stand, and take another deep breath. Sweetie is right, and so is Scoots. The smell… this isn’t the new blood smell of the dead man over my shoulder it’s the stink of death. Old death. New death. And the smell of a butcher’s hook hanging from a bloody post in a basement lit by the lights of hell. The fog is getting thicker. No… that’s not right. The Fog is getting thicker. The sound of sirens is eclipsed by a clap of thunder as the Fog of the Trails whirls around us thickening until it’s so deep we can barely see each other. “Grab mah hand!” I reach out and grab Scootaloo’s hand just as she grabs onto Sweetie Belle. We grip tight and don’t let go, even as the ground shakes beneath us, and the sky turns from filmy winter grey into the deep black of the void. If that thing in the dark wants one of us… it’ll have to take all of us.
