Prologue
A thousand years ago, two royal sisters, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, ruled together.
Celestia raised the sun, and Luna raised the moon.
Together the sisters kept harmony in Equestria, but over time, the younger sister of the night, Luna, became jealous that ponies would sleep through the night instead of staying up to enjoy it. One day she refused to lower the moon, for her anger had changed her into a mare of darkness, Nightmare Moon.
Celestia tried to reason with her sister, but Nightmare Moon refused to back down. The resulting battle was devastating, and soon turned into a full blown war.
Celestia would have used the elements of harmony to send her sister to the moon, but her sister had hidden them and instead she and her unicorn soldiers managed to call up enough power to send Celestia to the moon instead.
Night reigned over the land until Nightmare Moon realized that without the sun the kingdom had become too cold, and without the sun the crops started dying, and would leave her subjects to freeze and starve.
Reluctantly, Nightmare moon started raising the sun again to fix these problems, but just long enough to warm up the kingdom a little and to allow the crops to flourish, leaving shorter days and longer nights no matter what the season.
Most were too afraid to try to stop the new ruler of the land, but as time went on, through each new generation ponies became more and more angry about the strict and tyrannical rule of the Princess of the night
One thousand years was a lot of progress to go through, coming up with new spells and potions to fix oncoming problems with extreme solutions.
It was mostly the teenagers who ended up rebelling, causing a lot of trouble to everyone in their quest to take down authority and raging against the Princess. Crime rates soon skyrocketed because of this. Crimes committed by teens.
The parents were having more and more trouble controlling their children, and cried out for a solution, which the Princess gladly gave to them in the form of a chilling new law.
Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, parents can have their child "unwound," whereby all of the child's organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn't technically end. While most of the teens unwound are troublemakers, there are exceptions to the rule.
All a parent had to do to get rid of their child was notify the proper authorities and sign down their permission. Simple, neat, easy. Then they would show up at a certain date to take their child into custody.
Those taken to be unwound would be kept at a camp while they waited for their fate. To be taken to what everyone had started calling “The Chop Shop” so they could be taken apart and their organs distributed to those who needed them. Nobody knew what happened inside them but the doctors, as any taken in to be unwound never came out again. At least, not whole.
Half the ponies thought this was a good idea, It would get rid of the troublemakers while saving the lives of the good and peaceful loving ponies.
The other half of the population was horrified by it, but any overt protestors were quickly arrested and fined, and there wasn’t much they could do about it.
Nightmare Moon was a cruel ruler indeed.
Now you may be wondering, who am I that is telling you all this history about a new and darker Equestria?
Well, my name is Glowing Flame, and I live in an orphanage that has once again experienced cutbacks. A group of us have been sentenced to be unwound, and I am in that group.
Looks like I’ll be finding out what happens in The Chop Shop pretty soon myself.
Chapter 1
Taken Away
I’m a red unicorn with red eyes, a black mane and tail and a fireball for a cutie mark. My best and only real friend here Silver Mane, who is a white unicorn with light blue eyes and a light grey mane and tail with a paint brush for a cutie mark with red paint on the tip and I hang out together a lot.
We were known as the troublemakers because we didn’t really like anyone else in the orphanage and we tried to duck out of group activities as much as we could.
The head of the orphanage, Mr. Lemon, was an earth pony with green eyes, a yellow coat and white mane and tail and a lemon for a cutie mark, and tended to lecture us on this a lot.
Mr. Lemon’s right hoof stallion was Mr. Brown, who has a light brown coat with orange eyes, a dark brown mane and tail with a brownie for a cutie mark.
We didn’t know their full names, and we sometimes speculated on why they’d want to keep it a secret.
When we heard that the orphanage had yet again experienced another cutback, everyone groaned. It meant we wouldn’t be getting any new equipment or repairs. That we couldn’t add on to have more space for new orphans coming in.
At least, that’s what it’d always been before, just an inconvenience.
I overheard Mr. Lemon and Mr. Brown saying we were getting some new orphans in and that we didn’t have enough room. I didn’t think much of it. I figured it just meant we’d be crowded for awhile.
How wrong I was.
The next day they came without warning. The Unwind Authorities. It all happened so fast, nobody had time to really react.
They stormed in and grabbed us, slamming magic suppressors on the unicorns horns, and chaining us to each other.
Silver Mane and I looked at each other in horror, as we were also in chains. We all looked at Mr. Lemon in shock. He
cleared his throat and started speaking to us.
“I’m afraid due to the large cutback and all the new orphans coming in, that we need to make room here at the orphanage. Now, some of you do not have good attitudes and are older so you will probably never be adopted. So instead, you will be unwound and your organs will be sent on to better the lives of other ponies.”
“You bastard! How could you do this to us?!” I hollered at him.
“Yeah! Murderer!” Silver Mane added his two cents.
The other orphans shivered and kept their mouths shut. Maybe they were afraid if they tried to stand up for us that they’d be taken too.
“Now, now, there’s no need to overreact,” said Mr. Lemon. “You aren’t going to be killed, you’ll just be living in a separated state.”
“Like that’s so much better! I think I’d rather die!” I snapped.
“I’m sorry kids,” said Mr. Brown. “I wish there was another way, but we desperately need the room,” he said sadly.
“You really don’t have a choice in the matter,” said Mr. Lemon calmly. “Take them away gentleman.”
We fought, we all fought, but it was no use. We were boarded into a carriage and taken away from the orphanage, screaming protests the whole way.
The place we were taken to was called Happy Jacks Harvest Camp. All the buildings had been painted bright and happy colors and all the counselors wore shirts with smiley faces on them.
Silver Mane and I looked at each other and I could tell that we were both thinking the same thing. Were these ponies for real?
We were all taken out of the carriage and marched into the camp which had high fencing all around it with long sharp spiky tips on the top so it’d be very hard to try to climb over. The unicorns magic suppressors were left on us and the pegasi had contraptions locked onto their wings so that they couldn’t fly.
I could see that escaping from this place was not going to be easy.
We were then all separated into rooms, each of us having a roommate. I was relieved to see that I’d been paired up with Silver Mane. After we’d been settled into our room, a couple of counselors separated us to talk to us in different rooms.
“Hello! My name is Bright Sky!” The female sky blue Pegasus with dark yellow eyes and a yellow mane and tail with a cloud for a cutie mark said to me. “I’m here to make your transition into a separated state easier for you, and to find out more about you.”
“Go buck yourself,” I said flatly.
“Now, now, I know that all this is a bit of a shock, so lets stick to simple things right now. What’s your name?”
“Glowing Flame.”
“What’s your talent?”
“I can make fire, control fire, and make things very hot.”
“Interesting,” Bright Sky raised her eyebrow. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a talent like that before.”
“Yes well, I was thinking I could become a fire pony before all this happened. I could help control the fire while other ponies put it out.”
“That’s a very useful ambition,” nodded Bright Sky. “But just think, perhaps one of your organs will go to save a fire ponies life. Then you’ll have come full circle!”
“You are a very sick mare working in a very sick place made by a very sick ruler.”
I was returned to my room after that. I often had the power to get under adult’s skin.
After awhile Silver Mane came back. He sat down on the bed next to me.
“So what’d they tell you?” I asked him.
“That maybe I’ll have something donated to an artist and come full circle,” he replied.
“Huh, they must have a pamphlet they quote off of.”
“Flame? I’m scared. I’m really, really, scared.” His lower lip trembled and I hugged him.
“Me too buddy. Me too.”
TO BE CONTINUED...
