Three years later
It had taken far longer than she had wanted it to, but Rarity now held the deed and the key to the worn down building that she had her eye on ever since she was a young teenager. It was true that the place was certainly filthy but Rarity enjoyed cleansing filth. She had ever since her first murders at the age of eight. But that was 8 years ago and a lot had changed in that time. For one thing, she had now moved out of her parent's home. This building would not only be her business, but it would also be her home. It had the coziest room on the top level that would be perfect for her room and there was a fabulous room right next to that which would make an excellent workroom.
She took the key to her new home out of her saddlebag and unlocked the rusty door which promptly swung shut again once she was inside. The atmosphere inside her house was dank and musty and it took Rarity a few moments to get used to the smell. She looked around for a few moments for a light switch and when she found one, she flipped it on. The light overhead flickered for a few moments before a crackle of electricity ran through it and blew out the bulb. Rarity ground her teeth together. It was just one more thing to pay to get fixed around here. Money was no issue of course as her ability to find gems had long since set her up for life, but she still disliked having to pay for things to get organized. She pulled a candle out of her saddlebag, the blown out bulb was something that she had anticipated and lit it to get some light in the room. It wasn't much and the sunlight shining through the door offered more light than the candle did, but it was just enough to see.
Rarity trotted outside where a group of movers was lounging around, waiting for Rarity to give them the go-ahead to begin moving her things inside. She nodded at the foreman who motioned clapped his hooves together to signal to his men that they had better get to work now. The men groaned but they shuffled to their feet and started moving Rarity's stuff into her house.
Rarity went ahead of them and used her candle to locate curtains for her to open. She found some and opened them up, letting sunlight flow through the window. The dust that had been accumulating on the curtains for however many of years flew into the air and Rarity fought the urge to sneeze. It was a lost cause. She saw that the curtains of the building were a garish mustard yellow color and Rarity shrank back, horrified that she had touched something so unfashionable. She used her magic to tear them down immediately and put them in a pile in a corner of the room. They would have to be replaced for sure.
The day was a busy one for Rarity and the movers. Hour after hour was spent cleaning the rooms, carrying items into the room and Rarity dictating were she wanted everything neatly put. Rarity thought that all of these men were brutish and idiotic. Sometimes it seemed as if they were ignoring her orders. They'd put a dresser in the workroom instead of in her room or a display case in her room instead of the main hall. It was little things like that which made Rarity grow steadily more irritated with the workers as the day moved on. What really irked Rarity was the fact that every now and again, she received the occasional lewd look from one of the workers. The foreman in particular shot a glance her way whenever he got the chance. Rarity scoffed at this. She supposed she should be flattered that they were admiring her beauty but it really was quite bothersome for her.
After 8 hours of work, she was officially moved into her home. Her biggest worry was that one of the workers would snoop around and find her box, but none of them did and her box was secure in a fold of fabric where it was supposed to be. Rarity felt a sense of freedom that she had never felt before, even when she was committing her murders. She was free! She was completely on her own now and out from under the rule of her parents. Not only that, but she was starting her own business in Ponyville. She still cared deeply for her family though, particularly a fast growing Sweetie Belle, who had just celebrated her third birthday this past month. She had been sad to see Rarity move out, but Rarity hadn't moved too far away and the two could see each other every day.
The foreman came up to Rarity once most of his men had left. "So, were you satisfied with our work here today?" Rarity gave a thoughtful look as she mulled over the performance of the workers.
"Well, everything is where it should be for the most part and my home certainly does look much nicer than it did before so yes, I think you did an adequate job today." The foreman grimaced at the word 'adequate' but seemed to shrug it off after a few moments.
"Alright then lady, if you'll just pay us we'll be out of your hair."
"Oh yes, of course. How much was it again? 500 bits I believe was the agreed upon price." Rarity opened a chest and pulled out a bag of coins containing the proper amount and handed it to the foreman. "Here you are good sir." The foreman looked silently at the 500 bit bag.
"Nice try lady, you owe us 1000," he said.
"I beg your pardon?" said Rarity indignantly. "I hired you because I heard you were hard workers and not too expensive. I was told that your rate was 500 bits for a job like this!"
"Well, your house was a special case lady; we didn't agree that we'd have to clean it as well." Rarity shot him an angry glare.
"I wouldn't pay 1000 bits for your hide, much less for the mediocre job you did today!"
"Well, I can involve a lawyer in this whenever I want lady! Pay up or we'll sue!" said the foreman angrily. Rarity maintained the glare she had given.
"Well then, if you are willing to involve a lawyer in this extortion, then I suppose I had better pay up shouldn't I?" The foreman gave a triumphant grin.
"That's the idea lady, you wouldn't want us to have to give your store here bad press before it even opened."
"Indeed not," said Rarity stiffly. "However, I don't have an extra 500 on hand at the moment so if you would be so kind as to wait until I have gathered that amount I would appreciate that." The foreman nodded in agreement.
"Just drop it by my office by tomorrow morning or I will get a lawyer involved." As he exited the house, Rarity smiled to herself. It was so wonderful when ponies deserved what was coming to them.
Rarity was hiding in the bushes next to the office of the moving company, waiting like a predator for its prey. She highly disliked her current surroundings but it would all be worth it when he came out, the foreman who had tried to extort her earlier that day.
The decision to kill was never a difficult one for Rarity. If she felt that the victim deserved it then that was it, his or her fife ended within a few days. It had been that way ever since she was a filly. She mulled over the events after the foreman had left. She had gone up to her room and retrieved her special box. The rock was placed aside in favor of examining the wood. She knew that she was running out of space and that she would soon need another counter if she was to keep marking her kills. At the moment, she was examining her kill counter to see if she needed to start a new counter now, or if there was room to mark this one some more. She turned it over and to her delight; there were a few blank spots on the back. Another counter would be required soon. Rarity ran her hoof over the newest scratch mark, another solicitor like the one she had killed that fateful day with Sweetie Belle three years ago. That one was kill 27, this one was kill 56. Rarity almost always killed outsiders these days. No one in Ponyville would notice their disappearance and if she killed fast enough, no one could mark Ponyville as their last location either. She grinned in anticipation of kill #57.
Rarity snapped out of her memories just in time to see the nasty foreman leave his office. With a yawn, he locked up the office building and left for home. Rarity eased out of the bushes when he was far enough away. She always made sure to keep her distance so as to not alert her prey, but stalking ponies in the dead of night was just another skill that had become second nature to her.
As Rarity continued to follow him, she saw that the number of houses in the area had decreased in number. Rarity recognized this part of town as the one she had grown up in, so many years ago. Surely he wasn't...no, there was no way that this brute now lived in her old house. Rarity had never considered the thought of murdering in her old house. It was such a sanctuary to her in her early years and the thought that she could kill there was a fascinating idea.
Sure enough, Rarity saw the foreman stop at her old front door and walk inside. Rarity giggled in anticipation, a kill in her own home! Oh, she liked this, she liked it very much. It would almost be like coming full circle for her. She checked her saddlebag once more to make sure that she had everything that she needed for the kill. Content that she was ready, she walked up to the door and knocked. She heard a slight commotion inside the house, a mumble of irritation and the sounds of someone coming to the door. Within a few seconds, the door opened revealing a very worn out looking foreman. When he saw Rarity, he raised an eyebrow. "Uh, can I help you miss?"
"I believe you can, you see, I was about to deliver the money to your office when I ran into a lawyer friend of my own who said that I certainly had a case against your extortion. In fact, I believe that I can sue you enough to gain control of your entire operation. Celestia knows that I am sure I can run it better than you can." The foreman looked exceptionally uncomfortable at this news.
"Uh, look miss, I'm sure we're both reasonable ponies, maybe we can cut a deal here?"
"Oh, I'm certain that we can. Nopony wants a mess on their hands do they? Do you mind if I came in so we could discuss the matter more comfortably?" said Rarity. The foreman groaned in frustration but opened his door more and let her in.
Rarity walked inside the house and looked around. The layout obviously had not changed, but the fact that somepony so mean lived here was a taint on the home of her youth and she almost sensed that in the air. Rarity hoped that once the foreman 'moved out' that somepony nice would move in to her home. The foreman led Rarity into the living room and directed her to a chair. Rarity shook her head with a smile. "Oh no thank you, I prefer to stand," she said. He shrugged and sat down on a chair himself. Before he could begin his discussion, a Pegasus mare came into the room looking confusedly at Rarity. She turned towards the foreman. "Honey, who is this?" she asked. Rarity surmised that she was his wife.
"Oh yes, my name is Annette and I am here to make sure neither I nor your husband has any reason to go to court against each other. You see, your husband here tried to extort me for double what I owed him after I used his services so I am merely here to straighten the matter out." The foreman stared at Rarity with a horrified look on his face. His wife looked at him almost a little angrily.
"Is that true?" she asked.
"Oh I'm afraid that it is quite true madam but I'm not actually here to discuss money or lawyers." The foreman looked at her questioningly.
"Uh, then why are you here?" he asked. Rarity opened her saddlebag and pulled out a butcher knife.
'I'm here to kill you," said Rarity. The foreman and his wife were frozen in shock, trying to register what Rarity had just said. The moment of shock was all she needed and with a snarl of rage, she lunged towards the foreman and sunk the knife deep into his shoulder. He screamed in pain as Rarity threw her body weight into the knife and it sank deeper into his shoulder. Rarity felt the knife scrape bone and she pulled it out. The foreman fell to the ground writing in pain and his wife began screaming in terror. Rarity wheeled around and pointed the knife at her. "I would stay very quiet if I were you. Your life and the life of your husband depend on you entirely so please, SHUT UP!" The words silenced her and she began quietly sobbing. She moved over to her husband and knelt down beside him, trying her best to ease his pain. She could only place his head on her lap and look up at Rarity.
"How could you!?" she said, tears of anger flowing from her eyes now. "Is a little money worth this!?" Rarity merely laughed at her words.
'Why, of course dear," The wife stared at Rarity in shock. "I mean, one must be firm in matters like this. Extortion is wrong isn't it sir?" The foreman weakly nodded.
"We, we won't tell the cops on you Annette, just let us go," he said weakly. Rarity rolled her eyes.
"Oh, don't take me for a foal. You know what I look like, you know where I live, and I just stabbed you in the shoulder and made no secret of my desire to kill you. Why, the second I leave it would be your duty to call the authorities on me and they would catch me very quickly. So really, don't insult my intelligence by saying you won't because you certainly will," said Rarity.
There was a brief moment of silence while Rarity pondered what to do next. The position the two were in made attacking outright difficult as the wife would certainly begin fighting to save her husband. Attacking the wife first would possibly be risky too as she would know when Rarity was going to attack by her body language and possibly fight back. She suddenly remembered how she had accomplished her 18th and 19th kills and decided that the situation called for that same strategy.
"I'll tell you what sir, I will let you go if you give me something," said Rarity. The foreman's eyes widened with hope.
"Anything, just name it!" he said.
"Your wife, or more accurately, her life. If you let me kill her right here and now, I will let you go." The wife looked down at her husband in shock, but she wasn't as shocked by that as the answer that followed.
"Yes! It's a deal, just take her and let me go!" said the foreman excitedly. His wife immediately stood up and backed away. A look of pure horror was on her face as she stared at the man that she thought would die for her. Rarity merely smiled. It could not have gone any better.
"Well then, I suppose we know what to do now then don't we?" she said. With another snarl of rage, she jumped up on top of the foreman and began repeatedly stabbing him in the head. Her first stab went directly into his forehead, right through his skull and into his brain. She sensed that this stab was instantly fatal for the foreman but she continued to hack away at his face. Her second stab went into his lifeless eye, slicing his eye in half and causing a white liquid to ooze from the socket. She continued to hack away until his face was a bloody, unrecognizable mess.
Rarity regained her composure after a few seconds and looked up to see the wife staring blankly at the bloody mess before her. Rarity stood up and walked over to her. "I'm so sorry you had to see that darling. Not me killing him obviously, but I'm sorry you had to see his betrayal like that. Things of that nature are immensely distasteful to me," said Rarity. Before the wife could respond, Rarity rammed the knife directly into her throat. The wife made a few gurgling noises as the blood drained away from her body but after a few seconds she was still.
Rarity pulled the knife out of her latest victim's throat and began cleaning herself up. She mused that maybe she would have to find another way of killing that didn't leave quite as big of a mess as stabbing. Still, there was something oddly satisfying about the feeling of a knife penetrating flesh.
Rarity trotted over to where she remembered the bathroom to be. She cleaned the bloody knife up and used a few towels hung on a rack to clean herself off as well. She then picked up the bloody rags and went to go move them over to where the bodies were but decided that as long as she was here, maybe she could stop by her old room briefly to see just how much it had changed, for old time's sake. She placed the towels in a pile on the floor and trotted towards her old room.
The door was closed and oddly enough, painted in bright rainbow colors. It seemed rather unlike this couple to do something like that as the rest of the house was painted in dull greys and reds. No matter, Rarity opened the door and what was inside the room almost caused Rarity to give a small yelp of shock. On a tiny bed on the far end of the room was a sleeping Pegasus filly. Rarity quietly entered the room and tip-hooved closer to examine her. She was just about Sweetie Belle's age and had a light orange body and unkempt lighter purple hair. Tiny wings were folded at her side and Rarity saw that they seemed to be a bit small for a filly her age. She looked around the room and saw a picture frame on the wall on the left side of the bed. Rarity took a closer look and saw the foreman, his wife, and the filly in the picture, smiling happily at the camera. A caption underneath the photo read; "Mom, Dad, and our darling daughter Scootaloo at the Fillydelphia Fair." So, her name was Scootaloo huh?
Rarity turned back to the sleeping filly and decided that she had better do the job completely. Rarity believed that growing up without parents would be very hard for Scootaloo so she might as well save the tiny filly the trouble. Rarity went back to the bathroom and collected her knife from where she had left it in the sink. When she returned, the filly was still sleeping peacefully, unaware that her parents lay butchered in the sitting room not 50 feet from where she now slept. Rarity stood over the filly and raised her knife over her head.
Rarity walked through town hurriedly, lest somepony see her. Sleeping peacefully in her saddlebag was the sleeping filly from the house she had just been to. Rarity had lost the nerve to kill the little Scootaloo a few seconds after she raised the knife. She just hadn't been able to kill her like that. She had imagined what the three year old filly would look like with a large gash in her throat and Rarity immediately flashed back to that horrid day when she had held a blood-soaked Sweetie Belle in her arms. She realized at that moment that there was no way that she could kill this little filly. So, Rarity wrapped her in a blanket and put her in her saddlebag. She had spent a few hours cleaning up the house so that it would be spotless to even the most thorough investigation. Then she had wrapped up the corpses in a large tarp which she carried into the Everfree forest for the predators to dispose of. Rarity loved using the forest as her dumping grounds because nopony had the nerve to go in there and thus they would generally not investigate making it the perfect spot to dump bodies.
Rarity was actually surprised that Scootaloo had not woken up yet as she was certain that the bumpy journey towards their destination would have woken her up. Although, the screams of her mother as Rarity stabbed her father should have done that as well but little Scootaloo remained fast asleep. After an hour of walking, Rarity reached her destination, the Ponyville orphanage. It was located outside of the town itself but it was still considered a part of Ponyville. It was a perfect place to deposit the tiny filly as Rarity didn't know anypony in Ponyville who would appreciate waking up in the morning to see a sleeping Pegasus filly on their doorstep. Rarity used her magic to lift Scootaloo out of her bag and she placed her on the doorstep of the orphanage. She also placed a note that she had written using a sample of the mother's hoofwriting on Scootaloo's blanket. It merely said: 'Please take good care of our daughter Scootaloo as we cannot.' Rarity knocked loudly three times on the door and bolted away to hide. She hid behind some bushes and peeked through a gap in time to see a kindly old mare open the door. She was shocked to see the tiny Pegasus filly on the doorstep and she immediately picked her up and brought her inside. Rarity trotted back to her home, content that her job was done.
