Fateless

Red took a step outside and pushed his blonde mane out of his face. The sky was filled with dark clouds. He didn’t know what it was about the weather pony in Ponyville, but she seemed to make it rain a lot.

His horn lit up and he reached out for the cloak he kept on the hook by the door. He draped it over his light blue body, he would need it if the rain started to fall.

He began his walk towards the outskirts of town, he was on business. Red wasn’t sure what to call his line of work, some called him a theif, others a stalker. He didn’t mind the names though, it paid good and as far as he could tell no one else was as good as him.

Long ago he had been in Celestias school for gifted unicorns. Dwarfed in skill by another purple pupil, Red soon gave up on the idea of becoming affluent in all magics. He instead focused on a subclass of magic people knew very little about.

Essence, Red seemed to be able to feel everyones essence at a very young age. It wasn’t common knowledge that every pony, no matter earth, pegasi, or unicorn, carried a magical signature uniqe to themselves. But Red, Red knew about these since the day he first used magic.

He had discovered it when he had been separated from his mother at a summer sun celebration in Canterlot. He could feel however her essence lingering in the air. Concentrating on the feeling and the essence he was able to follow the trail she had left behind and find her.

His Cutie Mark had also appeared that day. It was a black sillouete of the front half of a pony, the rear end was dissipating into a cloud of multiple colors.

When Red had decided to leave the Gifted Unicorns school he had focused on this feeling, he soon found that he could pick out and follow traces of not only people but objects too. This lead him to open up his own service as a procurer of items or information.

As he continued to walk down the street he paid no notice to the dirty looks the other ponies gave him. He didn’t blame them when your work was in subterfuge and deceit it was hard to make friends. It didn’t matter that most of them had requested his services at one time or another.

Today however he was on a mission, he had recived a very strange request in from of a letter. Attached to the letter was a large pouch of bits, it was more than he had seen in his entire career. The note however was a simple one.

“Meet me at the edge of the Everfree Forest, 10 AM tomorrow. We will talk there. Consider this payment as a incentive.”

There was no signature. However Red was stallion of money, and if more bits were involved he would be there. He trudged past the square where a Pink pony was bouncing around, he had been given a job once to try and track her down and figure out the source of her implausable energy. He had only ended up with a headache.

He stopped and stared up at clock in the town square. It was still very early in the morning, only Seven. He decided he could get himself a coffee. Trudging past the Pink pony he made his way into Sugar Cube corner.

Mr. Cake was the one behind the counter when he walked in. Red trotted up to the counter.

“Hey Red what brings you here?” Mr. Cake asked nervously.

Mr. Cake always acted nervous around him. Red figured it must be because he thought Mrs. Cake was having Red spy on him.

“Relax Cake im just here for a coffee, make it black please.”

“You got it.”

Mr. Cake turned and walked into the back, leaving Red alone, or at least so he thought.

“You know I never understood why ponies say make it black, coffee is more of a dark dark dark dark brown!” a loud cheery voice sounded.

Red slowly closed his eyes. He had hoped the pink pony would have stayed outside a bit longer, at least until he had finished his coffee. Slowly he opened his eyes as he turned to face her.

“Pinkie.” He said acknowledging her presence.

She stared at him smile plastered on her face, before slowly studing him she took on a more serious expression. She leaned in close.

“Ohhhhhh I get it, your under cover, got it boss.”

“No… im not im just here for my coffee.” He said closing his eyes once more. He heard a shout from Mr. Cake and his eyes snapped open, Pinkie was once again standing before him with a steaming coffee mug in hand.

“You mean this coffee!”

Red looked back and forth between the coffee and her, he could feel a headache coming on.

“Yeahhh… that’s the one” He slowly lifted the mug off her hoof and trotted over to a table in the corner.

“It was nice to see you Red!!” she sang from behind him.

He sat enjoying his coffee for a while, Pinkie had dissapeared into the back and Mr. Cake had come back to the front, he was staring with a bewildered expression at Pinkie in the back.

Red thought back to when he was asked to investigate the pink pony. He was amazed to find that her essence was everywhere.

He could only hypothesize that Pinkie was everywhere, all the time, however she could only be visible in one place at one time. Each new moment she could be in an infinite possible amount of places. So theoretically she could at one moment be before you and the next be miles away. It really did hurt his brain.

He shook the thoughts from his head and turned back to his coffee. The morning passed and he spent the first hour just enjoying the silence, a silence that was interrupted by a cyan pegasus with a rainbow mane. This was the local weather pegasus Rainbow Dash.

She spoke in her tomboyish voice, “Hey Mr. Cake is pinkie here?”

Mr. Cake opened his mouth to respond. Pinkie Pie came out of it.

“Here I am!!!”

Rainbow Dash took a few steps back before regaining her composure. Mr. Cake on the other hand slowly raised a bottle of hard cider to his mouth as he retreated into the kitchen. Red could hear him mumble something about it being ‘to early for this.’

“Hey Pinkie, The girls are going to visit AJ in the hospital today, they wanted me to swing by and tell you.”

“Omygosh! She woke up!?! This means we can have a-“

Rainbow Dash put a hoof in Pinkies mouth, “No, no parties. She just woke today and shes not feeling a hundered percent. We just need to be there to… let her know what happened and all.”

Pinkie Pie nodded, the permanent smile that usually clung to her face dropped away for a moment. It returned however in just a few moments.

“Ok! ill be sure to be there!”

“Alright sounds good Pinkie, well I gotta go get this rain storm started. Seems nopony can get things going without me… shoulda been raining hours ago.”

With that the Cyan pegasus bolted out the door, Red watched her leave. He had heard about the fire, it was terrible news, Sweet Apple Acres was the only provider of apples within a hundered miles.

Red sighed and got up from his booth. He decided to get a start on his walk before the rain actually did start to fall. Trotting out the door he wrapped his cloak around himself and pulled the hood up.  He cast a glance up at the clock, it was eight thirty, he had time to spare.

He totted down the cobblestone path that lead towards the outskirts of town. When he reached the part where the stones turned to dirt he could feel the first drops of rain start to fall. Looking up he could see a group of pegasus moving from cloud to cloud giving them punches and kicks to start the fall of rain.

He quickened his pace as he continued down the road. In the distance a sign came to veiw on the side of the road. It was Sweet Apple Acres.

He had heard reports of the damage and even seen a picture in the newspaper. None of those did the horrific scene justice.

The fire apparently caused by a gass leak, had exploded a large section of the house leaving nothing but rubble, the rest had been burned down to the foundation. The fire had spread onto the grass from there and then to the trees the blackened ground was dead and lifeless.

He felt chills run up his spine as he walked past. It was an awful site to behold. The fire had apparently taken two lives a young filly and a older stallion. The last pony AJ as they had said back at Sugar Cube Corner had survived.

She was found under some debris unconcious, according to the papers she had been in a coma for almost three days. He could only imagine the how horible it would be to wake up to the news.

The forest was only a little ways past the blackend farm. Red wondered why there was even a path to the forest if it was so dangerous. Coming cose to the edge he sat down and waited, he stayed alert knowing that danger was just on the other side of the trees.

He sat in silence while the rain continued to fall. A few minutes passed before he thought he heard hoofsteps through the falling rain. It was coming from inside the forest.

He turned to look as suddenly the figure of a pony appeared from out of the forest. It was a large stallion he wore a hooded cloak like Red. His coat was a dark red color and his tail was orange but turned black at the end. His legs were wrapped in bandages.

Red looked up at the face under the hood, green eyes stared back at him from underneath. The pony then removed his hood and Red got a good look at him. Even though the stallion had a large burn across the right side of his face, and his right ear was missing. Red still knew who it was, for he had seen the pony in town selling apples before.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” was all he could manage to say.

Big Macintosh looked at him for a while before responding.

“Eeeyup.”

“I don’t understand, why are you out here? Why don’t you tell-“

“Listen Red I didn’t call you out here to ask questions”

Red closed his mouth and listened. Big Mac continued.

“I need your help… I need to find someone, no questions asked…. Don’t worry I didn’t lie theres more pay in it for you.”

Red thought about it for a moment. There was clearly something more to the fire on the farm. Otherwise why would Big Mac have stayed hidden, didn’t he know what this would do to his remaining sister? He looked at the stallion, they had never truly been friends but he could see there was pain in his eyes.

Red lifted his hoof and extended it to Macintosh, “Deal.”

Big Mac lifted a large hoof and they shook, After Big Mac walked past Red down the road away from the forest.

“Follow me,” he called back to Red.

Red turned and followed Mac down the road. They came to the gates of Sweet Apple Acres and Big Mac turned and walked through the gates.

Red stopped before the gate, the place looke even more ominous in the pouring rain. Hesitantly he stepped onto the blacken grass and continued to follow Big Mac.

Big Mac had walked up to the side of the burnt house and was standing before a large part of a fallen wall. He turned to Red and spoke.

“I’m gonna need you to lift this a little bit, once its high enough I can get under and lift.”

Red nodded and reached out with his magic, he had never been the strongest levitator so the corner of the wall rose slowly. Once it was a fair bit off the ground though he felt the load get easier.

He opened his eyes and saw Big Mac underneath the wall pushing against it. Sweet Celestia he must be strong, even with injuries like that.

When the wall had been lifted Red could see what it had been covering. There was a door in the ground, it must be a cellar. Red could only wonder why Big Mac needed to go down there.

The large stallion opened the door and trudged down into the cellar. Red waited up top not wanting to intrude on whatever Macintosh was doing. However soon Big Macs voice carried up out of the cellar.

“Red? You comin?”

Red walked over to the cellar and looked down, it was dark. Slowly he crept down the steep stairs. The cellar was damp and to his surprise there were no barrels of cider as he was expecting.

Instead there were boxes and odd assortments of objects and things. Big Mac was at the far end, he had lit a lantern and was looking inside an open chest.

He removed two pairs of saddle bags and started to place things into one, Red walked closer and sat nearby.

“What is all this stuff?” He asked.

Big Mac didn’t look up from the chest, “When we built a new cellar by the barn, we moved some things from the attic to here. This chest contains things from when our family first settled here, maps, documents, but that’s not why I needed to get in here.”

Big Mac was took the last of the large books in the trunk out and then reached down onto the bottom. He pulled out a long object wrapped in cloth, he placed this object carfully onto the ground at his hooves and reached back into the chest.

The next object he took out was a machette in a leather sheath, this he tossed over to Red. Red caught it in his magic and stared at it, the sheath had a strap on it that could allowed it to be situated on his back.

“You’re going to need that,” Big Mac said before reaching in and taking a hatchet out of the trunk. He then proceeded to put on a set of the saddlebags he had removed earlier.

The bags were different from the ones Red saw ponies normally wearing. There was only a bag on the right hand side. On the left there was a loop that Big Mac dropped the hatchet into.

On the top of the strap there was another loop that allowed him to slide the wrapped object into place diagonally across his back. After he had the bags on he began to sort through the books and papers on the floor putting some aside.

“Who exactly are we looking for?” Red asked, eyeing the machette once again.

Big Macintosh looked up from the papers, “Someone very important to me… look im not going to lie to you Red. It will get dangerous I can almost gaurentee it, I know we never really had much of a friendship or anything like that…. But I really need your help.”

Big Mac stood and walked over to one of the boxes on the wall he pried it open and lowered his head down into it. When he turned he had a large bag in his mouth, he lowered it to the floor in front of Red’s hooves.

“Money wont be a problem, I can pay you more when the job is done.”

Red looked down at the bag, it was large, he liked this. Danger wasn’t something he was very afraid of, his work usually put  him in the line of fire of other ponies. He had had his fair share of death threats.

“I’m going to need something that belonged to the pony, to know which essence to track.”

Big Mac walked over to another one of the chest on the back wall. He opened it and Red could see that it was filled with random assorted fabrics, he removed a large pink ribbon.

He walked over to Red again and place it at his hooves, “will this do?”

“Yep, you got everything you need down here?”

“Give me just a moment… I’ll meet you outside.”

Big Mac handed the other saddle bag he had pulled out of the chest to Red. It was very similar to the one that Big Mac was wearing. Only the bag on the right side was empty, and there was no loop on the top of the strap where Big Mac had placed the covered object.

Red also slipped the machette over his head and was pleased when he saw it rested nicely on the left side of his body. He lifted the ribbon in his magic and began to trot towards the stairs out of the cellar.

He turned at the foot of the stairs and looked back towards Big Macintosh. The large stallion was staring down at one of the open books, he leaned over and removed a piece of paper from it and placed it in his bag.

Red turned and started up the stairs, he wasn’t a hundered percent sure that he knew what was going on here. The pay was good though, that’s what  he kept telling himself. If the large stallion wanted to keep his goals a secret well then Red didn’t see the problem with that.

He sat waiting on the blackened ground for Big Mac. Finally he heard heavy hoofsteps as the stallion emerged from the door in the ground. The stallion now had small metal boxes strapped into loops on the left side of his saddle bag strap.

“So you can find them just with that?” Big Mac asked looking down at the ribbon that was on the ground.

“Well this is just so I can get a read on which essence is theirs. Unlike regular residual magic from spells, essence lasts forever. So anypony that has ever been here has left a sort of invisible mark here.”

Red lifted the ribbon in his magic and closed his eyes.

“With this though. I can match the essence of the object with the ponies essence you want to find…”

With that Red concentrated on the ribbon feeling the familiar prickling across his skin as the magic seeped out of him into the air. Opening his eyes he looked up at the ribbon slowly he felt his vision start to fog.

He had heard the other magic students describe how he looked when preforming his magic. His eyes would frost over untill they became a solid white color. It wasn’t the impressive glowing white that some extremely powerful unicorns experienced when dealing with master level spells.

His spell would blind him, but at the same time he could see just fine, the world dissintigrated into wisps of color. He could see Big Macintosh’s form as a large red wispy form, a trail formed off of it down into the cellar.

If Red focused, the rest of the colors would dim, and only the Red of Big Mac would stay in his vision. He could see it extend back out of the cellar and off to the gate of the orchard. There was more all over the orchard but it was easy to tell which were the most recent seeing as he had the stallion beside him.

He turned his gaze to the ribbon he held in his magic, it gave off a soft yellow glow. He focused on the essence, it was a strong one, he often felt the feelings and senses he got from the essence could describe a pony to him without actually meeting him.

Where Big Mac’s essence had been strong and powerful, this one was alive, free it lashed out in all directions. He broadened his focus keeping the thought of the yellow essence in his mind.

Then he saw it, it was all over the orchard, trails of the yellow essence were everywhere. He concentrated harder, while essence never truly faded from a place, it did grow weaker over time.

Some of the yellow was faded and dull, others were still wisping about, then he saw it. It was still lashing about, it was next to the rubble of the house, he concentrated on it. Instantly he felt fear, shock, and horror seep into him from the yellow substance.

The essence lead off out of the orchard, when it reached the front of the house however it became placid and flat as if the pony leaving it behind had fallen asleep.

He was about to release the magic when he noticed something, there was a dark black essence that was surrounded by smaller grey ones. He focused in on this essence and pulled away almost instantly, the black filled him with fear, as though it were pure evil.

It was not all he noticed though, the black essence… it had been here before.

Red release the magic and felt his eyesight truly return to him. He looked towards Big Mac, what was he hiding.

Big Mac spoke when he noticed Red looking at him, “And?”

“I know where to go.”

“Where.”

“Last I can tell the pony was headed north.”

“Excellent,” Big Mac smiled slightly, it was the first time Red had seen his expression change this whole time. “Listen I want you to go into town and get some provisions. When you’re done meet me back down in the cellar.”

Big Mac, reached into his pouch and brought out a small bag of bits.

“Don’t worry this isnt part of your pay,” He said as he placed the bag of bits on the ground in front of Red.

Red lifted the bag in his magic and placed it in the pouch on his side. Turning to leave he heard Big Mac call to him.

“I’ll be waiting.”

He trotted out the gate to Sweet Apple Acres, he let his thoughts wander back to the black essence that he had felt a minute ago. The feeling he had gotten from it, he shuddered, there was definitely something more to this story that Big Mac wasn’t telling him.

What, had he gotten himself into.