“It’s quiet,” Rainbow had said.
“If you say ‘too quiet’ I shall scream,” Rarity had said primly, without looking up from her magazine.
“Me, I’ll make you scream,” Sunset had agreed, looking up irritably from her game, her finger still effortlessly tapping the attack button. “Look, if it’s bugging you that much then go look for trouble you won’t find and come back once you’ve cooled off.”
“’M always cool,” Dash had grumbled to herself, pulling on her jacket. That had been, what, about an hour and a half ago? And she was starting to worry the girls might be right. It was getting dark, but at least it was a nice night in Canterlot. It felt good to be jumping rooftops and checking alleys for danger…well, the less rank smelling ones, anyway.
Honestly, at this point Dash wasn’t heading back to the hangout because it would mean admitting everybody was right. The city had been quiet for the last few months. Not so much as a sparkle of magic. The most action Dash had seen tonight was a particularly tense exchange between the people in front of her at the 24/7 takeout place she’d gone into for a much-needed carbs boost.
And now she’d finished her Tandoori mix, tossing the wrapper and her finished soda can into their respective bins, looking up to realise she’d wandered aimlessly into the old part of town. Antique stores, creepy bookshops, museums to stuff nobody’d ever heard of, etc.
…And a cry of pain coming from the alley next to one of those museums.
“Finally,” Dash grinned ferally. “Time to get loud!”
She vaulted the chain-link fence, posed dramatically against the moon for a second before landing, and hesitated. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at.
What was confusing her besides the lack of armed muggers (or killer ninja robots, a girl could dream) was that there was only one person here, staggering all over the place, grabbing at…herself? Yelling at herself? It would have given Dash the creeps if the sobs mixed in there didn’t make her feel sorry for whoever this was.
“Whoa, hold on,” she soothed, running up to try and grab the woman’s shoulders. “Are you okay? You need a hospital?”
She’d expected to better make out the woman’s appearance by the moonlight but found herself even more confused. The person she had a grip on seemed to be wearing some kind of mixed dress/robe thing, which was twitching all over the place as if alive. Dash was sure she was wearing something underneath it too, but the fabric danced about so much she could barely make it out.
Things seemed to be randomly growing and shrinking between the robe swatches, flashes of glossy pink or black material. A hand that suddenly gripped Dash’s wrist, making her yelp, was skinny and decked out with occult looking bangles one second, covered by a white latex glove the next.
The woman’s back arched suddenly, shocking Dash as a pink breastplate shot out of her chest, rubbing up against the Element’s own, at the same time a scalloped batwing sprouted from her shoulder.
The woman stared into Dash’s eyes, clutching her shoulders now with a grip strengthened by terror. One of her eyes was gold, the other a stunning, mesmerising teal, its eyelid touched with matching eyeshadow that seemed to grow and evaporate like frost on a pane. Dash could only guess that the woman’s hair must be magenta because white streaks were randomly sprouting and shrinking all over it, like angry snakes dancing in fire.
“Puh…p…please,” she moaned, her lips randomly acquiring and losing lipstick, “th-thought…ugh…c-contaaaaain…cuh…cuh…caaaan’t…”
“Yeah, you definitely need a hospital,” Dash declared, struggling to break free. “Lemme go! I can help!”
“NO!” The woman spun, almost throwing Dash away as her staggering forced the Element to start taking her own panicked, backwards steps, her sneakers rapidly squeaking on the asphalt. “Y-you’ve gotta…agh…AAGHHH…r-run!”
Dash realised the crazy bitch was trying to force her towards the open mouth of the alley. Anger at the brush off, being pushed, and, ironically, tragically, her innate instinct to help sent a shot of adrenaline through her. She managed to force her arms free and reverse the mare’s grip. “No way! Rainbow Dash doesn’t run!”
“Oh no…” her intended rescue croaked, both eyes turning pure teal and her hair perfect white. Then just as quickly as Rainbow registered she was starting to choke, her mouth forced itself open, spraying a waft of pink mist directly into the Rainboomer’s startled, half open mouth.
Dash hacked violently, thankfully more from shock than any damage to her throat, involuntarily releasing the woman, who slumped to her knees, her magenta hair and now self-evidently dorky magical robes juddering back into existence like someone had banged on the side of reality’s malfunctioning projector.
“Wh…wha…?” Dash whispered, staring at her hands, eyes turning glassy.
“I’m sorry!” the woman blurted. “I-I-I thought I could contain her, s-stop her f-from ever…I’m sorry!”
“Oh, but I’m not!” Dash purred, then jerked back from…herself? She looked all around with her new teal eyes. “Wha?! W-who said that?”
Why, I did, declared the voice she instantly knew only she could hear. Which means YOU did, honey. Mmm-MMHMM, you are PERFECT! So little resistance you almost didn’t know I was here! I think this is that start of something special, and I KNOW you’ll love it as much as I will.
“Love what?” Dash demanded, staggering back as a wave of euphoria suddenly swept through her head. She wrapped both arms around her torso, almost a sensual embrace, gasping at both the feel of the new white, pink cuffed latex gloves around her arms and the bizarre but heavenly feeling in her chest. Which was slowly expanding under her suddenly pink, rubbery, and shrinking shirt.
She staggered into the shadows cast by some clouds crossing in front of the moon. Despite the sudden darkness it was possible to make out her shuddering shape and a strange new glossy shimmer to her legs and hindquarters.
This, of course.
“Who…who are you…?” Dash whispered, almost reverently.
I’m you, of course…and you’re ME!
The shape of Rainbow Dash convulsed, gasped one last time…then straightened up with a quiet, satisfied husky chuckle. The woman scrambled backwards on her hands as the clouds finally cleared, moonlight glistening off the latex catsuit Dash was now wearing, her bared cyan wings and shoulders framed perfectly by the sinfully low dip of the suit’s back, her trademark mane and tail somehow more lustrous, definitely more stylish. Dash flexed her opera gloved hands experimentally, her back still to the terrified mage.
“I…I’m sorry,” the woman whispered.
“Yes, you really are,” Dash purred casually. She ran a glove though her hair, tossing it. She turned, surprising the woman slightly with the fact her eyes were still magenta. But there was no mistaking the malicious self-confidence and intelligence in them for Rainbow Dash. “Still, you did help make this perfect pairing, so I’m feeling generous.”
She stepped back, one of the heels of her new knee-high boots clicking as she struck a theatrical, magnanimous pose, gesturing to the exit like she was a magician’s assistant revealing it. The woman gulped, cautiously climbing to her feet and trying to edge past, her eyes never leaving the girl until she was almost ready to break into a run.
“Oh, and!” Dash chuckled just as her foot was halfway over the threshold, freezing her in place. The Pegasus leaned closer to the terrified practitioner’s ear, whispering. “If you even think of coming back to separate us, I won’t leave enough of you to make a ghost.”
The woman ran. Rainbow Dash turned to take in the city skyline, one hand on her hip, grinning so her new fangs were visible. “Y’know what this outfit needs?” she asked the night in general. “Some accessories.”
***
“Perhaps pocket squares,” Rarity mused, “or some colourful lapel pins…”
“Huh?” Sunset said eventually, realising she’d been too busy focusing on the checkpoints that people in sunglasses and suits were setting up all over the block, the roads already clogged with their black SUVs.
“For the not-even-trying-to-keep-it-a-secret-agents, darling,” Rarity clarified, indicating a particular pair of suits ‘n’ glasses who were looking every which way suspiciously as they dusted their SUV with tiny brushes. Perhaps they were checking for fingerprints, although Sunset couldn’t see whose they’d find other than their own. “You’d think with all those tax dollars they could at least look interesting.”
“I’m more worried about them becoming interested in us,” Sunset said as they finally managed to cross the street, traffic having been slowed to a crawl by all the crime scene investigating.
“You think they will? We’ve been lucky so far.”
“Right, so far. This crime spree was so big they’re setting up checkpoints. I haven’t even taken my geode out of my pocket in case they think it’s one of the missing jewels. And if they find out its magic? That magic exists at all? We could be sent up the river for a hay of a lot more than being possible accomplices.”
“Is it really a crime spree if it happens all in one go?”
“It’s big and it draws attention from the authorities we don’t need.”
“Good point,” Rarity agreed, then squinted at her as they began to climb the small stoop for the Sweet Justice ice cream parlour. “Sent up the river,” she repeated in a deadpan.
“What? I’ve seen human movies!”
“From how long ago?”
Rarity yelped as Sunset brusquely shoved her through the front door. Further back up the block the two fingerprint investigators pointed at each other from opposite sides of their SUV’s hood, with twin cries of, “I KNEW IT!”
***
Pinkie Pie waved at them from a booth the other girls had managed to snag. Well, most of the other girls. Dash wasn’t answering her phone, and from the look now on Applejack’s face (in addition to a heated IM chat this morning) Sunset knew there was a nagging suspicion why the Element most fond of running her mouth was incommunicado.
Even without Dash the booth was a tight squeeze for just the five of them. The parlour was packed with Canterlot citizens discussing more than just the high quality of the frozen treats.
Last night, as the nearby TV was recapping, a string of robberies had taken place all over the city. Sunset wasn’t sure if it was a magical thing yet. The thief had stolen tons of jewels, gems and diamonds, but, well, a thief would be after that stuff.
What had drawn so much government and media attention, beyond the scale of the crimes, was the speed involved, multiple museums and private penthouses struck seemingly one after the other, despite being at completely random compass points of the city and miles from each other. And what worried Sunset in addition to that was the single piece of evidence which suggested these crimes were linked at all.
“—a slight rainbow effect that continues to baffle video experts,” the anchor-woman du jour was saying, “but which authorities believe does indicate a singular presence behind what’s arguably the crime of the decade. The almost simultaneous occurrence of each theft also has them speculating that the perpetrators are a highly organized syndicate, possibly armed with some kind of new camera scrambling technology.”
“Or one real fast filly who’s smart enough to doge the cameras until she can’t,” Applejack suggested grimly.
“Oh, come on!” Pinkie protested.
“Rainbow doesn’t even know anything about jewellery,” Fluttershy agreed, nodding with the vehemence she only displayed when at her most stressed. “She might be missing, or-or just avoiding us, and, well, sure, she’s done a lot of things when she’s bored, but stealing? Isn’t that a bit much? Even for her?”
“You’ve all known her longer than me,” Twilight said diplomatically.
“Fluttershy’s right,” Rarity said. Fluttershy smiled. “Rainbow Dash knows nothing of jewellery.” Fluttershy frowned.
“If she was going to turn kleptomanic, emphasise on the manic, she’d have done it long before now,” Sunset retorted. “And it’s not like she’d be able to fence them. The feds’ve been turning over rocks all day. Dash loves attention, but not this kind!”
“She was gettin’ super twitchy what with how quiet things’ve been,” Applejack said.
Sunset scowled. “So, you’re saying, what, she randomly grabbed those things to stir up trouble?”
“There’s no solid evidence she did anything at all,” Twilight pointed out. “That trail on the video could be what the authorities think it is.”
“And, loathe though I am to cast aspersions,” Rarity said, “there’s also no solid evidence it’s not what Applejack thinks it is.” Twilight nodded.
“Hey!” the Element of Honesty insisted, trying to keep her voice steady. She’d stood up from anger and now realised some heads were turning in their direction. She pretended she’d just been reaching over for a napkin dispenser, pulling it with her as she sat down and breathed out. “Look, what I’m sayin’ is…we know magic can make people do things. Like the kind the Dazzlings were throwin’ around. Believe me, I’d love to be wrong here, but just ’cause it looks like Rainbow did it doesn’t mean she wanted to. We’ve met more’n our fair share of folks under a spell. Heck, hands up anybody here who ain’t been under one a time or two!”
“Alright, that’s…that’s better,” Sunset sighed, crossing her arms. “And kind of worse.”
“Sunset’s worried the powers that be may finally notice our particular brand of extracurriculars while looking for our fleet fingered and footed felon,” Rarity explained.
“If that’s a fancy way of sayin’ they’ll realise magic exists then who cares?” Applejack said, face even grimmer. “Findin’ RD, whatever she did or didn’t do, is the priority. And makin’ sure she’s okay, which she won’t be if she hits some speed trap the lawmen might think to set up for her. Askin’ questions later ain’t the problem, the fact they’ll probably shoot first is.”
Sunset smiled ruefully, brows knitting from thought and the general stress of the situation. At least AJ was coming at this from a good place, and a practical one. Time for her to do the same. “Yeah, you’re right. We can focus on this thief when and if we find them. To find Dash, I’m thinking we pair off and go where we know she might be.”
The others nodded and she turned to her first choice. “Fluttershy, you’re with me.”
“Alright!” The Element of Kindness lowered her resolutely clenched fist as her confidence wavered slightly. “Um…why?”
“Because you’re the one with the spare key to Dash’s place.” Sunset put her hand on the other girl’s shoulder as they all stood up, giving Fluttershy a reassuring, confident smirk. “We’re going to go there, look for clues, and prove once and for all that she’s innocent!”
***
“Ooooooooh boy,” Sunset said distantly a few hours later, cringing in Dash’s doorway as they took in the new living room, which was larger, posher, and more filled from floor to ceiling with stolen treasure than they remembered. Sultry jazz playing somewhere in another room added to the surreality.
“Maybe we have the wrong floor,” Fluttershy suggested numbly, her face calm but the glints from some sapphires on a cushioned plinth reflected in her screamingly wide eyes. “Of the right building. Which we opened with the only key that’s supposed to fit.”
Sunset stepped carefully into the…foyer?...and looked around carefully. Dash’s new apartment looked more like a penthouse, wide and lined with Grecian columns, elegantly curving staircases winding up from each high, golden arch doorway, hinting at even more rooms. Mirrors were everywhere, casting the glint of the stolen goods and making the impossible new space feel fuller than it was. A strange pink corona shimmered around the columns and plinths, possibly the visible manifestation of that perfume smell in the air.
“The dimensions of this room make no sense for the outside,” Sunset said slowly, eyes narrowing. “I think this is a Mind-Palace-Ification spell.”
“That’s nice…?” Fluttershy ventured.
“It’s when a personality is so strong that it can alter its localized time-and-space,” Sunset explained, trying to examine some nearby treasure without touching it and leaving fingerprints. “But if this is Dash then I wouldn’t expect…something like this.”
“And yet it’s so me, don’t you think?” the Element of Loyalty’s voice echoed from nowhere, making both friends almost jump into each other’s arms. There was a muffled bumping noise that made them turn in its direction, in time to catch sight of an unrolling red carpet bouncing down one of the staircases like an excited dog eager to meet them. Once it had unfurled across the floor, stopping inches from the toes of their shoes, they could see it also had gold lining.
Sunset scowled at the self-satisfied air of this display and stalked along the carpet and up the stairs, Fluttershy forced to jog behind to keep up. Despite how tall and winding the staircase had looked they didn’t have long to walk, apparently only taking one turn in the staircase before winding up on the landing of their destination, which might confirm Sunset’s altered dimensions theory.
The room they entered was still jarringly familiar as Rainbow’s room, sports and music equipment spread amongst mounds of stolen jewels, but just as inexplicably large as downstairs. Mirrors and columns were everywhere here, too. Dash was sitting casually on the end of her enlarged, now heart-shaped bed, humming along with the omnipresent jazz soundtrack as she screwed some of her stolen loot into her guitar’s frame. “Hey girls,” she purred, not looking up from her work.
“Alright, I want answers,” Sunset declared, continuing her stalk, still speaking with every step. “Where have you been, why haven’t you been answering your phone, and what the hell are you wearing?!”
She’d come to a halt on this last line, staring at Dash as the stunned realisation set in. Rainbow finally looked up, grinning at Sunset’s gaping mouth, the blush in Fluttershy’s cheeks as she peered around the Equestrian’s shoulder, and put her guitar aside, crossing her legs to better show off her knee-high boots and the glossy sheen of her black catsuit. She brushed her hair away from her shoulder, drawing further attention to the way her cyan neck sloped elegantly down to the cleavage showing over the rim of a shiny, plastic looking pink breastplate that seemed to be held up in defiance of physics.
“This,” Dash smirked, closing her eyes as she luxuriously ran a hand down the black latex covering one of her thighs. Fluttershy bit her lip at the sleek sound this made, the rubber of Dash’s glove on the rubber of her legs. “Okay, sure, the jewels I’ll grant ya, but is it a crime to look this good?”
She frowned, confused, as her two friends turned to look at each other.
“Spell,” Fluttershy said simply.
“Totally,” Sunset agreed.
“Hmph!” Dash huffed, primly turning her head away, sending her mane flowing gloriously behind it before settling it, her nose now so high in the air that Rarity would’ve burst into tears of admiration. “Here I am about to tell you the whole fabulous story and you two act like you know everything.”
“How about you tell us why we shouldn’t take this to the cops?” Sunset retorted, arms folded. She smirked as Dash kept her pose, but her eyes snapped open.
“How about no,” the Pegasus purred, smirking herself, and then she was springing forward so suddenly Sunset took an involuntary step back and Fluttershy yelped, jumping back almost a foot. One of her new white gloves clamped around Sunset’s corresponding arm in a vice grip, the other reaching for the Equestrian’s hair.
“How about this?!” Sunset snapped back, her free hand whipping up her geode. Dash froze, gasping, her stiffening body making her catsuit squeak. Sunset gritted her teeth as she felt a powerful empathy flash building in her eyes. Fluttershy flung a hand up to shield herself as the geode let off an all-consuming burst of light—
***
“Well-well,” a voice in the velveteen shadows said without using actual sound. “I’m impressed. Rainbow already had a lot of respect for you and the memories to let me know why, but it’s an honour to see you work in person, Sunset.”
“Talk’s cheap,” Sunset muttered, forcing herself to focus so her astral-self could see through the darkness of a clouded mind. “Who are you and how soon are you leaving Dash’s body?!”
There was a beautiful but self-satisfied laugh, and the mental-world around Sunset began to shimmer into a clearer existence. Most of it was pink mist, forming into cloud clusters and structures that reminded Sunset of Cloudsdale. She turned and found a golden statue of all seven friends looming out of the mist behind her. Perched on top of it was a figure in the brazen new suit Dash had been wearing back in the real world, an anthropomorphic bat with a white furred head, dazzling teal eyes, and a languid smile.
“Rouge the bat,” she said, swaying her booted legs as they dangled off the edge of the sculpted Dash’s head. “Pleased to meet you. Wish it could be in the flesh but until my precious Rainbow came along I didn’t actually have any.”
Sunset raised an eyebrow as Rouge patted the golden surface of sculpture-Dash’s head affectionately. “Admitting you’re possessing her? Am I supposed to be impressed because you’re honest?”
“Oooh, feisty!” Rouge grinned, showing fangs. She waved a hand to indicate Suset’s body and general existence. “I’d say YOU were the one baring all right now, though. Not complaining, mark you.”
Sunset looked down, realising her astral-body was stark naked, and then up as the bat-girl hopped off the sculpture, lazily flapping her wings to slow her decent, her gloved arms now folded. Sunset smirked. “If you’re trying to throw me off, you’ll have to do better than that. I’ve come to love this form as much as my true one, so that’s two reasons nudity doesn’t make me feel vulnerable like most humans.”
“Oh, vulnerable’s the last thing I want you to feel, sugar!” Rouge cooed, wagging a finger as she finally landed on the heels of her boots. “Since Dash and I found each other, I’ve been all about maximizing potential. How’d you like the whole world to drop at your exquisitely booted feet?”
Sunset put a hand on her hip, her expression bored. “If you’ve been spying on Dash’s memories of me then you know: been there, done that. I’ve more than earned my redemption and I’m not about to let a…whatever you are mess it up. Points for style and giving Dash that smoking hot makeover, but I don’t like you wearing my friend like you wear that suit.”
“Magnificently?” Rouge teased, starting to strut around her in a circle. Sunset stayed still, unphased as the bat took in her naked body.
“It looks good, absolutely,” Sunset agreed, folding her arms to show she wasn’t in the mood for games, not to preserve modesty she’d just said she didn’t care about. “But you’re not, are you?”
“Good? Moi?!” The bat pouted, putting a mock-aggrieved hand to her impressive chest. “I’m the best in the biz, and now so is Dashie! Or anyone else I enter this specific kind of partnership with, and she’s a much, MUCH better host than who I was stuck with for all those years.”
Sunset sighed, rolling her eyes and looking at some memories playing on monitors that had grown out of the clouds around them, the nearest ones showing both days she remembered having with Dash and images of the new Rouge-ified Dash picking the locks on display cases. “Is this gonna be a long origin story? I’ve got things to do, and you’ve already made life complicated enough for us in the real world. It’s going to be a full-time job convincing Dash not to blame herself for your antics, never mind getting all this stuff back to the rightful owners no questions asked.”
“How civic-minded,” Rouge chuckled, completing her fourth cycle around Sunset and stopping in front of her, causally sitting on a pink cloud with memory monitors of Dash scoring a winning goal. “Alright, I’ll answer any and all questions about my favourite subject—myself, and my newest partner—if you answer one for me first. Do you actually care if my latest loot goes back where I found it?”
“Eh, not really,” Sunset muttered, rolling her eyes and shrugging. “Rainbow’s my friend, so she’s my priority. Rich assholes can buy other knickknacks.”
Rouge squealed with delight, kicking her heels so fast she could have stabbed through rock as she clapped her hands. “My friend is my priority!” she repeated with delight. “Oh, I KNEW I’d like you! Maybe Dashie’s rubbed off on my a little, but I have always liked to see loyalty. And such blunt honesty! No wonder you two get on, which means you’ll both get on just fine with me. A deal’s a deal, ask away, hon.”
“Uh, alright,” Sunset chuckled involuntarily, caught off guard by the enthusiasm and the compliments. “Well, I’m guessing you’re some sort of spirit?”
Rouge nodded, examining the fingers of one glove and pulling it up her arm a little more. “Some say of adventure and the allure of treasure, but you were honest with me so I’ll be honest with you: I’m a spirit of thievery. Oh, those other things come with the territory, it’s why I was able to bond so perfectly with Dash, but lock picking, safe cracking, heart breaking, the whole shebang.”
“Huh. Okay. With your dress sense we’d have heard of you way before now. Are you from this reality?”
“A distant planet somewhere in it, sure.”
“You’re an alien?”
“Aren’t you?” The bat winked, making Sunset laugh again.
“Okay, okay, tabled! How’d you wind up in Dash’s head?”
“Would you believe it was destiny?”
“Nope.”
Rouge grinned, eyes narrowing with a sinister kind of respect. “Smart girl. I’ll try and keep it short.”
“Thanks,” Sunset sighed, sitting down on her own little patch of mind-mist. “Seriously, you’ve heard one villain monologue, you’ve heard them all.”
“Not a villain,” Rouge clarified, holding up a finger. She then pointed it at a nearby cloud and it sculpted itself into a large screen, held in a pink mist-base and floating above the miasma of Rainbow Dash’s altered mind. “Don’t get me wrong, with these wings I could never pass for an angel, and I’ve never really had any intention of trying.”
Sunset sat back, bored as a jumble of images skipped across the screen, Rouge fast forwarding through her own memories. The only images that lasted long enough to be clear were also the only ones that made Sunset sit up a little bit, usually involving either treasure or sensuality.
Eventually the barrage began to slow down, coming into focus on one image that made Sunset jump to her feet in shock, pointing accusingly. “The Dazzlings!”
“Oh, right, Dashie showed me that you ran into them,” Rouge chided herself. “You have lovely singing voices by the way. But yes, we crossed paths a time or two. They wanted power, I just wanted whatever the object was for myself, and it’s not as if I had any interest in using it. What use has a spirit of thievery for world domination, after all? It’s not as if it’d be any fun if people just BROUGHT me their stuff.”
“They’re…more complex than that,” Sunset sighed, sitting back down on her cloud. “At least these days. So what’d they do to you during the bad old days?”
“Eh, I was having plenty of fun,” the bat clarified with a shrug, “mostly at their expense. Travelling the mortal world, hoarding beauties to myself, rubbing it in my rivals’ faces, even haunting a few just for laughs.”
A montage of such high jinks was now playing on the screen. Sunset cracked a smile as Rouge possessed a suit or armour and challenged a stuffy looking archaeologist to a duel, chasing him all around an ancient tomb. Maybe it was the screen, but it felt like she was watching a movie, a fairly fun one. She’d expected a fight and here she was getting to just relax. Not something she’d have though she’d get to do in Rainbow Dash’s mind.
“And then the joke was on me,” Rouge sighed as the screen showed the image of a woman in some sort of robe. Sunset could smell ‘amateur scientist messing with forces beyond their ken’ all over this dork, sitting up again as, from Rouge’s POV, the women heled up a compact sized machine.
“Whoa, that looks like Twilight’s old magic sucking thing!”
“I’d have to check Dash’s memories again, but you’re getting the idea.” Rouge flopped disconsolately on her cloud couch. The screen had switched suddenly to a long shot and Sunset watched, feeling sympathetic, as the ghostly bat girl tried to claw at the floor of the museum she’d been ambushed in, everything below her ethereal hips stretching as it was pulled into the self-satisfied looking woman’s gizmo. What followed mostly took place from various jars in a laboratory, the only change of scenery she allowed her captive.
“She knew about my little games with the sirens and wanted to know whatever I knew about their amulets,” Rouge explained as Sunset watched various shouting matches over the years, intermixed by the woman walking around with her device worn as either a broach or a necklace, taking her unwilling guest to various museums and libraries. “Which was nothing. After a while I think it was more about punishing me for talking back than anything else, even if she did have a serious obsession with those things.”
“Nothing good could come from that,” Sunset snarled, eyes narrowing as she watching the woman trying (and thankfully failing) to make her own copy of Adagio’s amulet. “Ugh, and if she’d succeeded it’d have been my responsibility to stop her, probably before she unleashed some worse monster or whatever. Seriously, these types’re always digging! In the dumbest places! And then I have to drop what I’m doing and stop whatever half assed spell they cast, like monkeys banging sticks together and accidentally starting a forest fire!”
“Imagine how I felt,” Rouge smiled, though there was a cold undercurrent to her flirtatious façade. “I didn’t even know anything about magic. I DO know all about being a spirit, though. It took a while, but it was really just picking a lock with my sense of self. I began to seep out, bit by bit, until last night I was finally able to possess that smug bitch.”
“Which is when Rainbow came along,” Sunset surmised, a few seconds before the events of the previous night began to play in multiple picture-in-picture screens, depicting things from all three participants’ points of view.
“Bingo.” Rouge flopped down onto her perch, sighing contentedly. “Oh, you’ve NO idea what a rush it was! Finding someone like her, so compatible, so almost totally devoid of resistance. I was ready to grind the bitch who’d held me captive down to nothing and then, whoosh, here’s this athletic little marvel full of things I can latch onto, so perfectly you almost wouldn’t know I was there! It was like going from a cardboard box to a mansion in seconds. Oh, sure, there were a few things I had to delete to make us completely sympatico, Dashie’s insecurities, conscience, morality, and a lot of things I had to add—the girl knew NOTHING about jewellery or fine wine—but to pursue the comparison that was just swapping furniture. You’ve seen the result, I’m sure you agree we’re a work of art together!”
“She does look like a naughtier Rarity,” Sunset admitted, admiring the on-screen memories of the new Rouge-Dash admiring her new self in a reflective surface. “But if this is her head, where is she?”
Rouge gave her a broad, fang displaying smile that was close to a leer and reached down lazily with two fingers to trail a glowing line in a patch of cloud stuff. She pinched a corner of her incision and pulled the mist away like a page of a book, giving Sunset a look at where Rainbow Dash’s consciousness had wound up.
A lot of giggling, whooping and moaning wafted up from it. Sunset took a cautious step, looked into it, stared for just a bit too long as a blush crept over her face, then looked back up at Rouge, fighting a smile.
“Well, hate to be the fun police,” she sighed, conjuring her geode in her hand and holding it up, “but I’m going to have to ask you to vacate the premises. They belong to my friend, and I want her back.”
Rouge leaned back, raising an eyebrow as the geode sparkled at her, then to Sunset’s surprise reached out and stroked its surface admiringly. “Nice piece in person…in so far as this counts as in person. I can tell it has astronomical personal value! But I’ve been summoned, bound, and exorcized by the best, hon. Your empathy trick needs a lot more kick than that. Besides, there’s two points you haven’t considered.”
“Ugh, more hassle,” Sunset muttered, whipping her geode back to briefly glare at it, before closing her hand around it and putting both on her naked hips. “Alright, looks like I’m getting a villain monologue after all.”
“Not a villain,” Rouge teased, wagging her finger again. “Point one: have you considered asking Dashie what SHE wants? Just because there wasn’t any resistance doesn’t mean she couldn’t choose to fight back…and did she look like someone at war with herself to you back in the waking world?”
“Well…no…” Sunset realised, slowly, struggling to figure out why that logic didn’t creep her out as much as she felt it should have, then trying to figure out why she felt like it should have. “But…I mean…you…you’re influencing her!”
“Which brings me to my second point.” Rouge stood up, walking towards Sunset, one hand on her hip and a cocky smirk on her lips. Sunset stared into those gorgeous teal eyes as the bat leaned towards her. “Your empathy shtick is a two-way street. This little chat has been fun, believe me, but if you deduced that I’d possessed Dashie it should’ve occurred to you I’ve been steadily exerting my influence over YOU the whole time, shouldn’t it?”
Sunset stared at her own reflection, feeling dizzy, as if she were literally about to tip forward and fall into Rouge’s beautiful, beautiful eyes, become trapped in her own subconscious in a world of hedonism, confidence, and lust like Dash had. “That’s…that’s not…I’m a good guy now! I…I…I’ve earned my redemption…”
“Of course you have,” the bat assured, gently reaching out and stroking the side of the girl’s head, making Sunset close her eyes and bite her lip. “But there’s always a part of your mind yammering away at you that you haven’t. Hey, guess what Auntie Rouge can turn off! Forever! And if you’re worried about gaining any new guilt from our work, no problem! I…sorry, WE have a code of sorts, it’s what makes us such a class act. And all those burdens you’ve been grousing about? Cleaning up after everyone, always on the look out for the next problem? I can make ALL those things stop being your problem. Just sit back, let me into the driver’s seat, and enjoy the ride…”
“I…I shouldn’t…” Sunset whispered as their lips got closer. “N-no, I can’t…I’m a magical protector of this world now!”
“And it’s a pain in your ass,” Rouge sighed with irritability Sunset knew was actually her own. A leer returned to the bat’s gorgeous face. “Besides, would a true hero really get pulled down this easily? Not only do you think of your responsibilities as a pain in your ass, but you’re also currently thinking about how good Dash’s ass looked in my catsuit. Oooh, and those’re some VERY naughty thoughts about her hips I see in there!”
“W-w-well yeah!” Sunset stammered, blushing. A memory of Dash checking her ass out in the catsuit was even playing on the still rolling screen right now. “B-but that’s not all!”
“Oh?” Rouge teased, stroking her geode with a finger while she cupped the Equestrian’s chin.
“I’m…also thinking about how well some of those jewels would go with my geode,” Sunset admitted, looking down as Dash’s gloved hands gently picked some out of a case, depositing them one by one in a bag, on the screen. “And my eyes. And my hair. And my jacket.”
“Which’ll look great with my jumpsuit,” Rouge cooed, leaning in again. “Glad we agree!”
“N-no!” Sunset gasped, trying to lean away as the bat wrapped her gloved arms and those soft, leathery wings around her…but not leaning away much. “You’re…you’re thinking those things…p-putting them in my head to replace those other things…”
She couldn’t even remember what they’d been, Rouge’s body felt like the mist lapping gently at her legs, so soft and warm and passionate. “I’ve…g-gotta…gotta…I can’t…”
“Yes you can,” Rouge whispered, and finally kissed her, wrapping her wings around Sunset’s head as the mist of Dash’s corrupted mindscape roiled and swept over them.
***
Fluttershy looked up, lowering her hand and still wincing from the now fading light. She jumped a little at a strange crackling sound, like rocks sliding off each other.
It took her a few minutes to work out what it was, but in her defence she was distracted by the sight of Rainbow, wearing that tight, glossy, revealing outfit, kissing Sunset…who was wearing something similar under her jacket now. In fact, it seemed to be growing on her, melting out of her original clothes, an almost liquid jumpsuit finally closing any patches and Sunset’s new white and pink boots growing to knee height as Fluttershy watched...
She finally realised what the sound was. Sunset still had her geode clutched in one now gloved hand, the other pressed to the back of Dash’s head as she kissed back.
The geode was changing. With a final crackle its facets settled into its new shape: a red, almost pink heart shape in a black, bat-winged frame.
Now that the crackle of shape-shifting stone had died away, the only sound in the Mind-Palace-Ified room was that of the two Elements kissing each other. Followed by the sound of their lips parting, their almost identical chuckle…then the sound of their jumpsuit squeaking ever so slightly as they turned to look at Fluttershy. The grins they gave her were almost identical as well.
“I’ll get…help,” Fluttershy decided, then instantly spun on her heel and ran. Failing to remember the magic altering Dash’s apartment into a phantasmal penthouse. Over which both Dash and Sunset would have a level of control, letting them decide such things as, oh, say, where the exit was.
“Fun’s fun,” Sunset purred, casually twirling the cord of her altered geode around her gloved finger, “and believe me babe, that was fun…but we’ll be in hot water if she makes it to the others. Before we’ve shown them the light as well, that is.”
“Hey, relax,” Dash teased her new partner, making sure to brush her rubber clad hips against Sunset’s own as she swept past, then giving her a peck on the cheek, “Rouge never gets caught.”
The new Sunset chuckled as she watched the instant rainbow contrail zip out the doorway, then sat on the bed, holding her geode up to her face. She grinned as the reflection of Rouge winked back at her in place of her own.
END...?
