//------------------------------// // Kiss // Story: Murder, She Tried // by Dewdrops on the Grass //------------------------------// Sunset’s breath stuck in her throat as she saw a figure arise from beneath the table. No mask this time. It was Wallflower, her hand squarely on the hilt of the dagger embedded in her belly. A sick, twisted smile decorated Wallflower’s face. “I told you,” she said as she twisted the knife, making Sunset gasp. “Oh… oh wow, Wally, I…” Sunset swallowed noisily, her breaths coming faster, her body slick with sweat as she grew weak in the knees. As quickly as she could she raised her hands to wrap around Wallflower’s, and deliberately took a step forward, shoving the rest of the blade further inside. “You really... love me this... this much, huh?” Wallflower shook Sunset’s hands off, her face contorting with disgust. “Why are you still going on about that? You’re dying, Sunset. Soon you’ll be dead. And then I’ll erase everyone’s memory of you, with this.” She withdrew a carved piece of stone from her pocket and held it up. Sunset let out a liquidy chuckle. “What’s… what’s that, silly?” “Oh, this?” Wallflower tossed the stone up and casually caught it with her hand. “It’s the Memory Stone. I found it a little while ago, after the sixth time I… failed…to kill you. I was gonna use it to just erase everyone’s memories of you, but, well…” She sneered. “Seeing you die for what you’ve done to me had to happen first.” “The only thing I… I ever did to… to you… is… is love… you…” Sunset choked. She fell backwards onto a convenient chair. Her eyes fluttered, but she didn’t dare close them. “Please… Wallflower… I… can you… do me one… last… request?” Wallflower rolled her eyes. “What?” “Please… just… just one kiss… please…” Wallflower turned away, both hands gripped knuckle-white by her sides. “Grr… you know what… you know what, fine. I can be magnanimous. I got what I wanted. I got my revenge.” She turned back around and placed her hands on Sunset’s shoulders. “I can do that for you. No one will ever know anyway.” Sunset smiled even as her body quaked with a spasm. “...hurry… please…” Wallflower sighed and leaned in. Her face came perilously close to Sunset’s. Their lips were mere inches apart. The warm air of Sunset’s breath was hot on her face. This close, looking right into her eyes… Wallflower saw nothing sinister. None of the lies or slander or twisted evil she’d come to expect from the queen bitch of Canterlot High. All she saw was sincerity of heart… in a pair of dazzling aqua green eyes that shone so strong despite their fading light. “What have I done?” Wallflower whispered. Immediately she closed the last bit of distance and their lips met. Passion flooded her, guilt and shame and regret mixing like so much oil and water with the triumph and jubilation she’d felt upon her success, all swiftly overwhelmed by the insistent sensation that she, Wallflower Blush, had just made a terrible mistake. Numb. She felt numb. Wallflower fell back on her butt, her eyes wide and pupils dilated as her limbs seized up, refusing to move. “Wha… what…” she stammered, only just able to incline her neck to look up at Sunset’s smile. Sunset’s malicious, sadistic smile, accompanied by a burst of bone-chilling laughter. Sunset, who showed no sign of injury as she reached down for the dagger in her stomach and pulled it out, tossing it aside like a used up toy. “Finally,” she said, even as more red gushed forth from her torso. “I… what… what did you…” “Oh, Wally, Wally, Wally.” Sunset shook her head and laughed again. Reaching up with one hand she unzipped her jacket and opened it up, revealing her shirt and skin whole and unblemished underneath. She then reached into an interior lining pocket of the jacket and pulled out a thick metallic pouch with a picturesque label of fruits, punctured in the middle and leaking the same ‘blood’ Sunset had been. “You didn’t seriously think you’d actually kill me, right?” Wallflower grimaced as her limbs froze up further, now wracked with pain, burning, stinging, like hundreds of fire ants crawling all over her bones, biting at her from the inside out. “I don’t… I don’t understand…” “Oh it’s really quite simple, Wally,” Sunset said as she stood up from her chair and shucked her jacket. “You see, you forgot one little thing: I’m smarter than you.” Wallflower tried to swallow but her throat wouldn’t cooperate. Her vision began to grey at the edges. She tried to ask a question but it came out as more of an unformed “huh” sound. Sunset squatted down, placing her hands on her knees as she flashed Wallflower a simpering smile. “Oh come on. Didn’t you think it was a little strange that I, Sunset Shimmer, once the ruler of this school, would fall apart like a five year old from someone breaking into my home? Didn’t it seem just a little bit out of character, especially when I turned it around on you?” Wallflower blinked, her eyes watering up with tears to the point she could barely see anymore. “I knew you planned to kill me from the start. You’re not very subtle. It’s a bit of an overreaction though, don’t you think? You knew I had changed. The whole school knew. But you came for me anyway, for your little revenge. If you’d just asked, I would’ve apologized, you know. I would’ve tried to make amends. I wanted to.” Sunset stood back up and walked around the chair, leaning against the back of it. “At least, I would have, had you given me the chance. Instead you embarked on a stupid plan to murder me. I don’t know how you thought you were going to get away with it. So I came up with a way to defend myself.” She reached into her fallen jacket’s pocket and pulled out a tube of lipstick. “Remember this? I threw it at you, that first night. This contains a little concoction I whipped up back in Equestria. It’s a combination of cockatrice blood, timberwolf shavings, and the venom of several different magical species. It’s guaranteed to be fatal, and untraceable by human tech. Right now, you’re undergoing a soft form of petrification. Soon the venoms will flood your system, and you’ll be the one to die.” Wallflower gasped out a choked, “Why?” Sunset shrugged. “Self-defense, maybe a little bit of vindication of my own? At first it was a last resort. But then you kept trying. And worse, I began to hear rumors about people losing memories. I put two and two together and realized you were connected to all of it. And I couldn’t let you run around free.” The Memory Stone! Wallflower screamed at herself from her own head, begging her limbs to move, to reach for the stone in her pocket and use it, get herself out of there. But she couldn’t move a muscle as Sunset reached into her pocket and plucked the Stone away. “Sorry, but you won’t be breaking any more minds with this.” Sunset scowled down at the Stone before shoving it in her pocket. “I’ll take this back to Princess Twilight. She’ll help me destroy it. In the meantime, you, my dear, don’t have long.” “No…” Wallflower murmured as her whole vision turned black and white, all the color fading away. “I… don’t… wanna…” “What’s that?” Sunset said, holding a hand to her ear. “You don’t want to die? Well too bad. I didn’t want to die either, but it wasn’t like you asked my opinion on it. But don’t worry, Wallflower. I’m not like you. I don’t want to do this. So before I destroy the Stone, I’ll make sure to use it so I don’t remember. You’ll just be another Jane Doe in the morgue, who broke into the school to kill herself with a knife.” Sunset grabbed a glove out of her jacket pocket, slipped it on, and walked over to where the dagger had fallen and picked it up carefully in her gloved hand. “Of course to sell that I’m going to have to stab you, but I’m sure you don’t mind. You did the same to me.” Wallflower managed to budge her arm a little, just enough that if someone were to squint and cock their head they might interpret it as a defensive posture. “Please… no…” “Sorry,” Sunset said, and to Wallflower’s surprise her words sounded sincere. “I really am. This isn’t how I wanted this to go, not at first. But you were too dedicated. Too convinced killing was the right way. This was the only way to stop you for good.” Sunset swallowed as she stared at the Memory Stone in her hand. “I’ll have to make everyone else forget you too though. Otherwise I might still remember this somehow. I’ll wipe my memories last. ‘Cause you know what the worst part is?” Wallflower shook her head just enough to get her point across before her body seized up one last time, leaving her stuck. “The worst part is, I really did start to fall in love with you,” Sunset said with a wry laugh. “I couldn’t help it. You really are cute, and your determination is… admirable. Maybe if things had gone a different way, we’d be sitting together happily, eating pizza and cracking jokes over horror movies.” She shrugged and brought the knife up right above Wallflower’s belly. “Oh well. It didn’t go that way. Too bad. Goodbye, Wallflower.” The knife came down.