Chapter 50: Needlework

‘It’s not fair, it’s just not fair.’

He watches in fear, as she steps into the area he originally thought was safe. She is walking closer to him, and so he starts to step back, to keep a safe enough distance between the two. He wants to turn tail, and flee, but he couldn’t. He has to make sure that he keeps eye-contact with the mare, just in case.

She kept walking towards him, and starts talking to him with an apologetic tone, “Dusk, I’m so sorry for what I’ve done to you... could you... maybe let me take a look at you?”

“N-n-no, j-just leave m-me...”

-FLASH FORWARD-

He is immobilized to the spot in panic, as she walks up to him. She wasn’t walking with any signs of malice, or anything like that. In fact, she seems concerned for his well being. She stands right next to him,`and gives him a sad look.

“Dusk, could you show me your hurt fore-leg? I... I’ll try to stop the pain...”

He doesn’t listen... at first, but then he looked at her properly. She is in quite a horrible state, with her coat and mane/tail affected by the mud. It would be horrible for Applejack’s standards, let alone Rarity’s. He knows that this would of been hard for her to do, she looked pitiful.

He lets down his guard, as he extends his fore-leg, “*sigh* Here you go Rarity, I’m sorry for making you go through this.”

“That’s okay Dusk, but remember this...”

He yells in pure agony, as a horrifically sharp pain courses through this fore-leg, and slams the appendage onto the ground. He sees a sharpened purple gemstone has pierced through his leg, and has lodged into the ground. He cries tears of pain, and horror.

“I don’t forgive you, and I never have.”

She wears a creepy smile, when she levitates another four gemstones in front of her. She launches three gemstones to each of his other legs, and because Dusk is frozen in shock, and fear, they all made contact. The impales pierce through all of his legs, cutting through skin, muscle, and bone like tissue paper, and painfully keeps him to the ground. He wails from the pain.

He sees Rarity, raising the final gemstone above his head. He casts one final glance at her, before she launches her last impales. She makes her final attack on Dusk...

-PRESENT TIME-

He yells as he reverts back to the present time. Rarity stops moving towards Dusk, when she hears his pained yell. She is worried for him.

“What’s wrong Dusk, why’d you yell like that?”

“...” He gives her a fearful look, before he turns around, and runs away.

“Wait, come back!”

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Dusk is running deeper and deeper into the forest, knowing that Rarity would be chasing him. It is easy for him to manoeuvre through the underlay, since the sudden adrenaline rush made him forget about his pain, and that he is naturally agile on the ground, and in the air. (But he isn’t fast, he’s actually quite slow)

He hadn’t noticed how close Rarity actually is to him, because he never looked behind him. The next thing he realizes, is that he is feeling a familiar, yet unknown force around him. Then it hit him.

‘Oh no, oh buck! She’s levitating me towards her...’

-FLASH FORWARD-

“Gotcha” She says evilly.

“...” Dusk ignores her, as he tries to resist the magical force which holds him. He is thrashing around, or trying to at least, since the levitational field prevented all movement. She brought Dusk close to her, and she whispers into his ear.

“You are going to be a part of a little... experimentation, back at the Boutique. You could help improve the fashion industry.”

“H-H-How?”

“Oh, you’ll see when you get there...”

“...”

Rarity teleports both herself and Dusk to the 2nd floor of her boutique, her ‘Inspiration Room’. Dusk is panicking again, as Rarity clears out one of her nearby tables, and lays Dusk on it. She casts a spell onto Dusk, which bounds his legs to the table, as she looks around the room for something.

He uses this small amount of time, to try to negotiate is way out of this. “R-Rarity, you don’t n-need to do this t-to me. What w-would you achieve by d-doing... whatever you’re going t-to do?”

“Oh you have no idea, Dusk...” He sees a small glimmer of her horn shine, before she continues looking for what she wants. “...and I'll just cast a spell which will silence you for a few hours, can’t have you distracting me while I work, can I?”

“Huh?” Is what he would of said, if he could talk. His eyes go wide, when he realises that he couldn’t open his mouth, or emit any vocal noise. He looks at her pleadingly, which is unnoticed by the sickly disturbed unicorn.

“Ah yes, I’ve found it.” She pulls out a small scalpel from the nearby drawer, which causes immense emotional stress to Dusk. If he could scream, he would. She menacingly walks closer to him, while holding the surgeon’s tool with her body. He is trying to remove himself from the magic binds that held him. He is pulling himself in random directions, in a vain attempt to escape.

“Oh this simply won’t do... we can’t have you like that.”

She walks back to the drawer where she got the scalpel from, and pulls out a full syringe, filled with a bright yellow liquid. She holds this with her magic, as well as the cutting tool, as she moves back to Dusk. He couldn’t stop looking at the syringe, as he tries to ‘break’ the magic. Rarity held the needle near his fore-hoof, but is hesitant to jab it in. He would simply not stop moving.

She moves in front of Dusk’s face, and punches him hard, stopping all movement. She uses the lapse to eject him with the unknown syringe.

He passes out...

-PRESENT TIME-

Rarity has levitated Dusk over to where she stood. He would be thrashing, but all movement was stopped from the magic field. She brought him close to her, and she strokes her hoof across his face. She looks downtrodden. Despite his fear of her, he couldn’t help but to feel sorry for her, he could tell that she is guilty for everything that has happened today.

“Dusk... words cannot describe how horrible I feel right now. I, do not deserve sympathy from you for what I have done, and I do not expect any... I hope that we can forget about this whole ordeal one day...” Dusk listens to everything she says. “I just want you to do something for me... I need you to relax for a moment. I can feel you trying to move inside the magic field, but you have to be relaxed, for what I need to do, okay.”

Seeing that he had no choice in the matter, he tries his best to loosen up. He could see Rarity’s satisfied look, as she readies another spell of hers. “Sorry Dusk, this may hurt a little bit.”

“...” He is still worried that she would do something horrible to him, but he decided that it would be best to comply for now. She seems more normal than she was half an hour ago.

He starts to feel a second magical force surround his body, more concentrated around the back of his body. Suddenly, he feels a hideously sharp pain all around his body, he lets out a pained scream.

Rarity is looking extremely apologetic, when Dusk looks at her with a pain expression, “I’m so sorry Dusk, but it needed to be done.” She levitates every single blood stained needle in front of him, to show him what she did. He nods in recognition. He sees himself being lowered back towards the ground, before feeling the magic field release around him. When the field dissipates, he collapses to the ground in pain. She rushes over to his side.

“Oh no Dusk, are you okay? Are you hurt?”

He starts to talk about a completely different subject. “Heh, every part of my head is yelling at me, to get away from you, but my instinct says differently. It’s not like I can move, anyway. *sigh* When I look at you, it makes my fear of you seem stupid, and childish... Oh, and I’ll be fine in a minute or two.”

She seems slightly relieved. “That’s good to hear Dusk... could you tell me what I did to you. I need to know.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“...No.”

“Well...”

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Dusk finishes telling her what she did to him, and he becoming less fearful of her. He couldn’t see any signs of malice from her reactions, and she took it quite hard. By the time he finished, he could stand on his hooves again, but he chose not to run away. She seems... upset about the whole ordeal, and walking away would be completely against his morals.

“H-How could I d-do something like that? How could I-I lose control like I did? I... I just don’t know anymore...”

“You don’t need to act like that... It wasn’t your fault. You said it yourself; you couldn’t remember what happened, so I doubt that you had any conscious control of your actions.”

“B-But I shouldn’t have acted like t-that in the first place. I’m a emotional mess, a-“

She is interrupted, when Dusk puts his fore-hoof on her shoulder, and silences her with his own version of ‘The Stare’. Not as good as the original, but it did its job.

“Rarity, you have to believe me when I tell you this, but it was MY fault, I shouldn’t have used such dirty tactic to get you out of the Boutique. You couldn’t have done anything about it.”

“Well... I suppose so...”

“I will leave here a happy stallion, if you realise that it wasn’t your fault.”

“...” She doesn’t answer, but she does something which surprises him. She pull him into a tight hug. It’s not a loving hug... it’s more like a ‘thank you’ hug.

“You acted from emotion, something that I shouldn't have toyed with. I still fear you, but I forgive you for what you did."

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