Author's Note
Hello Everyone!
This story is quite literally a tangled heap of words. I kind of just hodgepodged a bunch of notes together and called it a story.
Enjoy to the best of your ability!
Reporting Live
Pearly white heels glumly pattered down the dim hallways at Canterlot City Live. Chatter Cast went over her opening line in her head.
Hello, everyone. Today we’re opening with an act of gory violence– no– a tragedy… Of gory violence.
She had covered heavy stories as a newsreader before, but this one hit differently, harder. One of seven girls, dead, she didn’t even know the name of the girl in question, merely a window of what happened to her.
There was bloody footage to accompany the story and Chatter Cast didn’t want to see it, hear about it or even cover it at all. With every heavy step down towards the newsroom, anxiety stacked on dread. She hadn’t read the script. She was supposed to read the script. She was supposed to read it the night prior, it was a short script but as she and a single page of grief sat at the dining room table in the dark, she couldn’t bring herself to touch it.
Heavy steps, pearly white shoes and she bumped into her colleague. Ripley Truth. She looked up at him.
“You’re on in ten minutes, are you ready?” He asked, lacking a tone. She moved her gaze to the floor.
“I haven’t read the script yet…” She confessed, she heard Ripley inhale, and exhale with a sigh.
“There aren’t many quotes either. The hockey player and a few witnesses,” he paused, “some story.” Chatter Cast nodded.
“Of course the Rainbooms don’t want to talk, I don’t want to talk,” she said. He nodded before commenting.
“Broadsky wishes they would.” Chatter Cast rolled her eyes, she’d quietly wonder from time to time whether her boss was a sociopath. There was a moment of silence before Chatter Cast spoke again.
“My first job here, I was seventeen, talking about the winner of the Canterlot Kids Girls Soccer Tournament,” She paused, inhaling a shaky breath. “Now, I’m twenty-two, talking about the death of a teenage superhero, murdered – violently by an evil-infused hockey player in front of the arena.” She sobbed before laughing humorlessly, “it all links back to sports I guess.”
“And rainbows…” Ripley Truth stated quickly. Chatter Cast gave him a confused look, he was known for his attention to detail but also for being cryptic – the two reasons that Broadsky Live hired him as the second newsreader for CCL in the first place.
“Chatter Cast, which ten year old girl scored her first hat trick during that game?” He questioned, Chatter Cast fished through her memory, it was five years ago and she had covered many other Canterlot Kids games since then.
“... Rainbow… Dash. Rainbow Dash, was her name I think.” She answered eventually.
“Right… and?”
“And?” She was beginning to get irritated.
“Who died yesterday afternoon?”
“I– One of the Rainbooms.”
“Who?” He said again.
“I don’t know! I didn’t read the script!” She raised her voice.
“Okay, who was the lead guitarist in the Rainbooms?”
She shrugged, “I don’t listen to their music!”
“Rainbow Dash, Chatter Cast! Rainbow Dash!”
Chatter Cast’s breath got caught in her throat as her hand flew up to her mouth. Rainbow Dash. She turned on her heels and bolted for the bathroom, she was beginning to believe that everyone she worked with was a sociopath.
Chatter Cast stared her reflection in the cloudy eyes. Mascara was smeared down the sides of her baby-pink face. She didn’t even know the girl yet she was in hysterics. She had always been fragile but she was gasping for a breath under the overwhelming realization that everything was connected.
“And Rainbow Dash, what would you like to tell the world after achieving your very first hat trick and winning the game?!” Seventeen year old Chatter Cast pointed the microphone down towards ten year old Rainbow Dash, lively eyes and a determined grin.
“You better remember the name Rainbow Dash, because that was the first awesome stunt of millions!” The child exclaimed with excitement. Chatter Cast laughed.
“You hear that folks? Rainbow Dash, with many awesome stunts to come!” Chatter Cast held out her fist for a fist bump. Rainbow Dash laughed before enthusiastically returning it.
“Chatter Cast! You’re on five minutes ago, get to it!” Broadsky Live barked. Chatter Cast steadied her breath, shakily wiped her tears away and replied.
“Coming! Sorry boss!”
Anxiously pounding down the hall and taking a seat in her chair in front of the greenscreen, Chatter Cast shuffled her papers, sniffling and holding a gaze on the camera. She was live and unsure how to speak, the silence followed for a few minutes. She then began to read the script.
–
Fifteen year old aspiring athlete, dead in an incident at Horseshoe Arena.
PopRock Band by the name of The Rainbooms, famous for their music-charged abilities, were faced with more evil magic just yesterday at Horseshoe Arena. Hockey Player for the Canterlot Stallions – Chromium Glare was said to have found a new helmet in the west locker room. He says he curiously put it on and remembers none of his actions after that.
Witnesses say that Glare never appeared at the beginning of the game. Seven minutes into the first quarter, all power at the venue was lost, followed by a barrage of ice pellets flying through the doors.
Luckily, the Rainbooms were at the game and got up from their seats, quick to take action and start ushering everyone out.
It’s rumored that Rainbow Dash saw Glare about to freeze the doors but regardless of her reasoning, she briskly exited the venue before they were locked shut.
It is unknown as of now exactly what happened afterwards but going off of security footage from the arena, we know that she and Glare got into a tussle before she pried the helmet off of him in an attempt to break the magical trance. He then went on to violently take her life.
Now showing footage of the tussle from a security camera at the exit. The footage is graphic and heartbreaking, viewer discretion is advised.
–
The cameras were cut and Chatter Cast stood up and exited the room with tears in her eyes. She was not inclined to watch a video of the child she interviewed getting brutally attacked as a teenager. The dead girl, the first person she had ever interviewed as a professional, all Rainbow Dash, Chatter Cast wasn’t finished processing that.
–
Video Footage Depicts –
Rainbow Dash inhaled a sliver of air through her clenched teeth as the nails on her fingers pierced the skin on her palms like a thumbtack to a cork board. The iron grip on her wrist mimicked the one on her neck to a tee. She coughed without coughing and her mind started to swirl. Her friends were still frozen inside the arena. She could faintly hear them calling her name beyond her close-mouthed screaming. She knew she had to get out of this one alone, Rainbow Dash wasn’t one to doubt herself but as her throat screamed for air and her free hand pawed at his wrist, she started to panic. She didn’t want to die, didn’t want to die, didn’t want to die and she was about to die and that wasn’t what she wanted. Not at all.
Despite being a strong athlete, a professional hockey player, consumed by evil magic proved very hard for a teenager to match up to. His elbow weighed down on her chest, causing her back, wings and the thin blue and red fabric of her dress to indent with the rocks on the ground. Little needles punctured her raw yet dry esophagus and the pain was unreal. Rainbow Dash grunted as well as she could as she tried to move her legs from trapped under his frame. She shimmied, the back of her head grinding with the concrete. It was a full body effort in the sense that her knuckles were beginning to become granulated against the surface below her, but she was able to line her boots up with his chest. She extended her legs to kick him off of her.
The red imprint across her neck with some purple bruising became apparent as the strain was now gone and Rainbow heaved and hacked for air. As much as she would have liked to stay on the ground and close her eyes to focus on breathing in sweet, craved and well deserved air; she had to get off the ground before he pinned her down again. Rainbow Dash rolled onto her hands and knees. She quickly retreated from moving her right hand as every move of the wrist made her feel more and more like she was falling through the sky into a cluttered abyss of pain. As she took sight of her palms she felt slightly more nauseated. The crescent moons were deep and they stung in a hollow, bone melting kind of way.
As quickly as possible, which wasn’t very quickly; Rainbow Dash tried to rise to her feet and activate her geode in order to make an escape to break her friends free. She moved between coughs and shaky exhales for less than a minute because within twenty seconds, Chromium Glare was tackling her back to the ground, her face connected with it and she got a painful mouth full of rocks and dirt as a yelp escaped her lips. The sound felt like sandpaper grating up her throat like cheese. Mozzarella went red and it turned to the taste of blood from her swollen lip. A hard turn of her already sore neck later and her pale blue cheek was torn to pieces as she was dragged down by the ankle. Before she knew it, She was met face to face with him and his helmet as she was picked up, flipped over and thrown back down again.
Her head was throbbing but she could see the dark purple spell in his eyes, this wasn’t him. This wasn’t Chromium Glare, her favorite hockey player – the one she dragged her friends to the game for. It was someone else. If only she could break him out of the spell, he’d stop attacking her like a raging bulldog and help her up, maybe sign her wrist with red ink instead of breaking it bloody. Before he had the chance to pin her down again, she gripped the side of his helmet and yanked it off of him, tossing it over her head in a petty attempt to win at something, anything. She soon realized that had been a bad idea because he snarled, brows furrowing and eyes, in some way, getting scarier. She didn’t have the energy nor time to smile sheepishly because soon his hand was at the base of her ponytail behind her head and without a second to think, her head was being pounded down into the ground.
A thrash and she was confused. A thrash and she was hurting. A thrash and she was screaming despite her throat. A thrash and she screamed again but she couldn’t hear it behind the crack of her skull against rock. A thrash and it felt like it was. A thrash got stained red. A thrash, it started to slow. A thrash, she relaxed. A thrash, her eyes closed. A thrash, she was dead.
–
Chatter Cast reentered the live room, glancing up at the monitor. Six people cradling a body in a blood-soaked blue hoodie with a red and rainbow ponytail, sloppily threaded through a Canterlot Stallions hat.
She sat down in her chair with a heavy exhale.
“Now showing – In dedication to Rainbow Dash, Awesome As I Wanna Be, the music video by The Rainbooms.” Chatter Cast stated, her lip quivered as the music video began playing and Rainbow Dash’s voice rained through her earpiece.
