We Are Legion

Over 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.