Tempest Shadow: Mooby Road

by Captain_Hairball

Chapter 4: Dark Cat; Pale Cat

Tempest hadn’t been willing to give up the wheel until they stopped for lunch. Then Pinkie had taken over for a few hours, and Rarity fell asleep in the back seat. Tempest, curious about how Pinkie’s car worked, fished the owner’s manual out of the glove box. By the time it got dark, she had read the whole thing cover to cover twice. She still had no idea what made the thing go, but she had a pretty good idea of how to check the oil or change a tire.

Pinkie pulled off the highway at around nine o’clock at night. A few twists and turns later they were rolling through the center of a very small town. “Rarity! Rarity wake up!”

“Wha mah mah are we at Mooby World yet?” mumbled Rarity, sitting up and pushing at her hair. Her distinctive coiffure, which usually evoked a cresting wave, was now pressed into the shape of the back seat of a 1997 Ford Crown Victoria.

“Nope. I wanted you to look up on your phone if there any good bars around here.”

“I think you mean ‘hotels’," said Rarity, pulling out her phone and poking at it anyway.

“Nope. Not sleepy,” said Pinkie, pulling over into a fast food drive through line. “I need burgers and beer! Burgers and beer!”

“I was thinking of asking if they had bars in this universe,” said Tempest, leaning over to look at the drive-through menu. “I want one of those. The big one on the bottom right.”

“Right. Double Bacon Heart Attack. Do you want the combo meal?” said Pinkie.

“We could go to a hotel,” said Rarity. “Which typically have bars. We could drink in our room.”

“No, just the sandwich,” said Tempest. In the photo, the burger’s ample bun had been carelessly pushed aside, revealing the lush toppings and glistening patties beneath. She needed that burger.

“You know what drinking in hotel rooms leads to?” shouted Pinkie. “Lesbianism!”

“We don’t have that, ma'am,” said the tinny voice coming out of the intercom. “Even on the secret menu.” The voice sounded sad.

They drove around to the pickup window. “Do you need to come with us?” said Pinkie, taking the bag from the tired looking woman leaning out of the window. “We’re all queer.”

“Naw, I’ve gotta take care of my Grandma. Thanks for offering, though,” said the pickup window woman.

Tempest fumbled her burger out of its wrapper and took a massive bite. It was greasy and salty and gooey with cheese and crunchy with bacon and she loved eating in the human world.

“Ooooh!” said Rarity. “I found a place that has karaoke!”

†

Tempest liked the music here. It sounded a little like the ‘rock’ music Pinkie’d been playing in the car, but twangier and generally a little slower. She couldn’t say much about the singing since it was all done by drunk people who didn’t know the words. But the tunes were nice.

The eyes on them when they’d entered had been cold and hostile. This was a local bar, and Pinkie and Rarity stood out. The waitress had been snippy at first, but Rarity’s endless capacity for wine soon warmed her heart. Pinkie kept putting away whiskey sours.

But Tempest didn’t feel safe here. Hostile eyes were on them. She couldn’t tell from where, yet, but the back of her neck prickled with a soldiers’ instinct for ambush. She kept to the weakest piss-water beer on the menu. She could drink this trash all day and not even get tipsy.

“Why the.. why the long face, dearest heart,” slurred Rarity, stroking Tempest’s right forearm.

“Hey, that reminds me of a joke,” said Pinkie.

Tempest held up her hand. “Wait.” She nodded over at the karaoke stage. A man was stumbling drunkenly through a song about stealing a car from the factory one part at a time. “I like this song.”

Rarity leaned on Tempest’s shoulder and wrapped her hand around Tempest’s stump. “Tempest likes cars,” she purred.

“And Rarity likes butch girls,” said Pinkie, pushing on Rarity’s shoulder.

“I do not!” said Rarity.

The stage was empty. Tempest gently unentangled Rarity from her arm and stood up. “I’m going to sing.”

Pinkie cheered. Rarity cooed and clapped.

She felt strangers eyes on her as she climbed up and went through the songs. She wished she’d had more to drink — she couldn’t sing, and she knew it. Luckily, no one else here could, either, and almost all of them were drunk. She didn’t want to reprise the one about the car so soon, but there was one by the same artist about being in prison. She could relate.

The crowd in the bar cheered as the first bouncy, jangly chords pounded out of the speakers. They liked this song. Tempest felt her chest tighten. She’d better not mess this up.

She decided to make up for what she lacked in vocal range and the ability to tell one note from another with passion and volume. The simple, rhythmic nature of the song helped. She belted it out like a marching cadence. She faltered a little when she got to the line about killing a man just to watch him die — she could relate to this song a little too well — but she steeled herself and sang on. When she was done, she realized she’d had her eyes squinted shut the whole time.

She’d rather face a wall of cannons than put herself on display like this. But she’d done it. Rarity and Pinkie were bouncing in front of the stage. People were clapping.

“Do another one!” shouted one of the women. Several other people took up the refrain. Tempest took off her jacket, tossed it to Rarity, and picked the one about the car from the menu.

She’d come up on stage to try and win over the locals, but she’d had another reason. The elevated stage allowed her a better view of the bar. From here, she could see if the prickling at the back of her neck was just paranoia or if there really was a threat here.

A group of men and one pale woman sat at the bar, watching her performance coldly. The men in polo shirts and khakis, the woman in a little red dress. Something about them felt dangerous. Tempest had learned to trust her instincts — a lot of times it took her mind a little while to catch up with things her body sensed immediately. And she sensed trouble from them.

The woman's eyes met hers. A spark passed between them — a flicker of recognition. The pale woman was like her, and that was bad news. She smiled, and Tempest scowled. She didn't need this kind of bullshit right now.

The men got up and moved in to dance near Rarity and Pinkie for the rest of the second song. Tempest had a bad feeling about this. “All right,” she said into the mic as the last chords faded out. “Somebody else’s turn.”

The next song was a mournful ballad about adultery. A lot of these songs were mournful ballads about adultery. Tempest pushed through the crowd over to her friends. As she reached them, things started to move in slow motion. One of the men, looking Tempest full in the eye, reached over behind Rarity. Rarity squawked and hurried away from him.

Tempest was smart enough to know when she was being baited, but she didn’t care. Vision red-tinted with rage, she lunged towards the man. He brought up his fists in a stereotypical guard position. She feinted towards his face with her left hand twice. When he raised his fists to block, she drove the end of her right arm into his belly. He doubled over. The solder in Tempest knew he’d be out for a few moments, but that he’d recover from the blow soon. She wanted him neutralized permanently. She grabbed him by the hair and tugged his head back. The nose and the larynx. Both incapacitating blows. Potentially lethal.

She remembered Soarin’s broken body lying in the streets of Canterlot.

While she hesitated, the two other men came in on her flanks. The grabbed her arms and pinned her back. The gut punched one snarled, and came at her, hammering her ribs and belly with his fists. Pain pulsed through Tempest’s human body — its upright posture left all the most vulnerable areas exposed. She tried to concentrate, to look for an opening, but her aching gut and creaking ribs kept her distracted. This was the problem with mercy. With compassion. They made you weak. Vulnerable. How could she live like this?

The Rarity hit the man punching her across the back of the head with an empty wine bottle. Tempest used the momentary distraction to knee him in the groin, and he went down.

“Rarity! Stay back!” she shouted, ripping her right arm free. She swept that man’s legs out from under him with a kick and he went down clutching his knee. She punched the man holding her arm in the eye with her stump and yanked her hand free. Grabbing him by the hair, she slammed his forehead against the forehead of the man still clutching his groin. Their skulls made a hollow thump, and they both fell to the floor.

That left the woman. She stepped over the groaning forms of her fallen lackeys, red dress swirling about her thighs. “I think you're freaky,” she purred in a high-pitched little girl's voice. She had paper white skin, long yellow hair, and a skull tattooed on the curve of one breast, right over her heart. “I like you.”

“Clean them up and go home,” said Tempest, nodding at the fallen men. She did her best to stand straight even though her whole front ached. She’d had much worse.

The woman didn’t answer. Her hand darted to her exposed cleavage and came away clutching a sharp little knife. She lunged for Tempest, tearing open her Twilight Sparkle t-shirt and leaving a burning line just beneath Tempest’s collar bones.

Tempest very much regretted removing her jacket and the slight protection its heavy animal hide offered. Unprotected, she could only try to stay clear of the sharp little blade and wait for an opening this woman wasn’t about to give her. Worse, Rarity and Pinkie were coming around behind the pale woman. Did they think because they’d banished a few demons they could survive a knife fight? If they got stabbed, it would all be Tempest’s fault. She had to win this battle quickly before her friends did anything stupid.

The only plan she could think of was a bad plan, but a bad plan was better than no plan. "This is getting boring," she said tossing her head contemptuously.

Then Tempest turned to walk away. She counted the half second the woman would need to close with her, and dodged right. The knife nicked her left side, but the woman’s arm shot past her, in between her arm and her body.

“Oldest trick in the book,” said Tempest, grabbing the woman’s wrist and jamming her thumb down on the tendons. The pale woman yelped with pain, and the knife clattered to the floor.

“Battle isn’t a game,” Tempest growled in the woman’s ear. She braced her stump under the woman’s upper arm and pulled down on her wrist, starting her elbow bending the wrong direction.

“Please stop,” the woman said, tears of pain shooting down her cheeks.

“If I break your elbow, you’re never going to fight again,” said Tempest. “Or you can promise me to find a new hobby. It’s all the same to me. I know which way will hurt more, though.” She wrenched the woman’s forearm down, and she screamed.

“I promise! I promise!” gasped the woman. “Please let me go.”

Tempest hesitated. She knew which way was safer for the world at large. Could a killer change?

There was only one way to find out. She let go and let the woman fall to her knees, clutching her elbow, cheeks soaked with tears.

Tempest bent down to scoop up the knife. “Pinkie. Rarity. We need to go.”

†

Tempest was the only one sober enough to drive. She drove until she found the kind of motel that didn’t mind checking in a blood-covered woman and her two drunk friends at three in the morning. Soon Pinkie sprawled across the only bed, snoring and drooling. Tempest was in the bathroom with her shirt off, cleaning her wounds in the sink.

“Here,” said Rarity, coming into the bathroom and sliding Tempest a white, translucent bottle. “I packed for any eventuality.” Tempest opened the bottle and sniffed it. Astringent. The healing potion stung when she dabbed it on her cuts, but the wounds felt cleaner afterward.

“Are you hurt badly?” said Rarity, leaning one hip on the sink counter.

“They’ve mostly stopped bleeding,” said Tempest. “I don’t think I’ll need stitches.”

“You saved us,” said Rarity, stroking Tempest’s bare shoulder. Tempest glanced sideways at her. She was dressed only in her nightshirt, long pale thighs bare. Something about the way the shirt lay on her body suggested that she had nothing on underneath.

“Do you know why they came after us?” said Tempest.

Rarity opened her mouth, the closed it when it because clear Tempest’s question was rhetorical.

“It wasn’t because we’re queers. And it wasn’t because we were strangers. That woman wanted to fight me. They used you to get at me.”

Rarity bit her lower lip. Her cheeks were flushed, her breath still smelled of wine, and she sounded like she was willing herself to keep her voice from slurring. “I don’t understand. They just wanted a fight?”

“For some people, fighting is fun.” Some people. She flexed her good hand into a fist.

“Well, it’s a complicated world. I’m still glad you were there,” said Rarity. She slid closer to Tempest until their bodies were touching, separated only by the thin fabric of Rarity’s nightshirt. “And I think you deserve a reward.”

Tempest sighed. “You’re drunk. And I miss Twilight.” She also had no idea what the relationships in this world looked like. Love, like war, needed to be approached strategically or you could lose before you even started fighting.

Rarity sighed. “I see. That’s how it is.” She turned Tempest’s head towards her and kissed her long and deep. She bit Tempest’s lower lip before she pulled away. “In the morning, I will be sober, and you will still be fabulous. I shan’t mention this matter again. But if you change your mind…” she squeezed Tempest’s arm. “I should get to bed. Good night.”

Author's Note:

Johnny Cash songs referenced are One Piece at a Time and Folsom Prison Blues.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

I don't know why, but I really appreciate how Pinkie invited the pickup window woman to join in their journey of madness, horse magic, and sexual tension.

Also, darn it, now I want an entire album of Emily Blunt singing Johnny Cash.

[Darkstarling]

Pinkie inviting was very nice yes.

I wonder if this Pinkie would actually much MIND the night leading to lesbianism. Who knows what she likes.

Tempest and meat, still like it.

There are indeed alot of mournful songs about adultery. But there's a reason they're classics.

Barfighting knife wielding lunatics... to an extent I think Rarity and Pinkie might have gotten too used to having their magic even several years after they passed it on. Otherwise that fight would have been over.

Apparently recognizing that kind of hotel by sight is a skill that crosses dimensions.

Aw, hung up on Twilight...well that's fair. But there's time.

[dvdspires]

The solder in Tempest knew he’d be out for a few moments

Soldier.

The Rarity hit the man punching her across the back of the head with an empty wine bottle.

Then.