Chapter One: A Late Night Stroll
The night had already descended in the land of Equestria and Luna had brought her moon up to light the sky, along with the millions of stars keeping it company. The landscape seemed frozen because of the lack of equines moving and even the wind had halted. It was one of those beautiful summer nights.
Most of the ponies were sleeping, completely missing this beautiful scenery brought to the ponies by both the nature and the magic of the younger alicorn sister. There were some exceptions, of course, most notable of them being Luna, filling her duties as the goddess of night and guarding her subjects while they were getting the rest they needed.
Among the exceptions was a single drunken stallion living in the town of Ponyville. This stallion, known by his friends as Thunderlane, had had a wonderful night with his friends, who had suddenly all disappeared to enjoy the rest of the night with the cozy blanket over their fragile bodies, leaving Thunderlane alone in the dark. After a while of trying to realise what had just happened the stallion had decided, in his drunken state, that it was best to start heading home instead of crashing at a friend’s place. So, there he was, slowly and unsteadily heading home to get some of the heavenly slumber. It seemed like a normal little walk to him.
Little did he know about the events that would take place during this little walk.
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“Lousy friends leaving me all alone. Stupid alcohol making me all dizzy. Bucking hooves not working properly,” Thunderlane ranted while making his way home, trying to keep on the path but failing horribly at it. At least he hadn’t tripped yet.
He had been at one of Cloudchaser’s parties, known to be the best place for the small group of close friends he had gathered over his lifespan to spend time during a beautiful evening. This time the party had gotten a bit wilder and, understandably, the pipes that brought the alcohol from the barrels stored in Cloudchaser’s basement had been in some pretty hard use. The party had lasted quite long, but suddenly everypony had just either grabbed a partner and left to do Celestia-knows-what or just picked up their stuff and left to sleep. Thunderlane, being in his drunken state, had been left alone and as Cloudchaser had decided to go to bed as well, he had been pushed into the depths of the night without anypony or anything to support him.
Everything around him seemed both so very familiar and something he had never seen before. The mixture of darkness and alcohol was doing its magic with his vision. It also seemed to affect his motor skills, sense of time and brain functionality, the latter one causing for everything around him suddenly seem much more disturbing and scary. The trees were stretching their branches towards him and he could have sworn that something was moving among the large trunks of them. The shrewd little stones were getting in the path of his hooves on purpose and the evil light of the moon was giving life to the surrounding shadows. Everything seemed to have some hostile thoughts towards Thunderlane.
That’s when he started picking up the pace. First it was mainly a pathetic-looking wobble, but soon his brains started to remember the concept of running and his hooves were getting steadier, thus increasing both balance and speed. In no time he was running at full pace, dodging branches and larger stones while trying to build a good picture of his surroundings. He succeeded in the first two ones, but the third one was still quite hard as he didn’t have such a great vision in the dark, even though the moon was providing him with some light. It was only a matter of time when he would bump into something and pretty much every pony in the wide world of Equestria would have realised that it was better to simply halt and take a good look around to see if there actually was something wrong. But Thunderlane’s brain capacity had been reduced by the drink he had been downing quite furiously earlier and the rest of it was being allocated to performing the simplest tasks such as making sure his heart didn’t stop and putting one hoof forward while keeping another one in the ground.
After a good two minutes of running, the bump came. It wasn’t a light bump, but rather a bump that managed to both sober Thunderlane up a little and give him a nice little headache that was surely going to develop into a much worse one after the hangover would arrive.
Upon the impact, Thunderlane immediately fell to the ground. The stinging pain in his head triggered a reflex that flung his hooves towards his head to try and cover the hurt spot. He stayed in that position for a good while, lying on the ground, forehooves over his head and face pressed into the soft soil he was lying on. He didn’t count minutes, but something close to twenty must have passed without him moving a bit. To some passer-by it would have looked like he was sleeping.
After the headache was starting to get a bit better, he finally lifted his head up to have a look at the thing he had bumped into. Surely enough it was a tree, quite a big one in his opinion. The tree had survived without any major damage; the biggest thing Thunderlane’s head had managed to do was a small spot where the bark had either gotten damaged or fallen completely off. Nothing permanent.
He cursed under his breath, took a quick look around and decided that it would be the best to get home to have a better look at the damage the tree had done to him. He got up on all fours and turned towards the path that was running just next to the tree he had had the little accident with. He was about to step on the harder soil of the path and just keep on going, trying to forget about the little embarrassing incident, but the cracking sound of a twig snapping in two froze him on his tracks. He slowly turned back to face the blackness that resided behind him to judge if he should be running or walking back home. He saw nothing but the silhouettes of the trees and the occasional ray of moonlight making its way through the gaps between the leaves of the green coat every tree had. Once again he was about to turn his face back towards the path and keep on heading home, but this time a voice, the voice of a mare, to be exact, stopped him.
“So, how’s the little late-night walk going? Having a lot of fun? Meeting some new friends? Getting in nearly-fatal fights with trees? Don’t spare the details,” the voice said, the source of it still unknown to Thunderlane. He was shaking at this point, so he didn’t manage to process a good answer for the voice. After waiting for a while, the voice continued.
“So, did the evil tree steal your tongue? Better check out,” the voice said and soon after that something, strangely resembling a pony, floated out of the darkness and towards the tree. Thunderlane hesitated for a while, but eventually turned towards the tree to see who or what the source of this voice was.
He didn’t see anything but the backside of the thing, that he could now confirm to be an equine, having the body shape of a pony, limbs like a pony, mane and tail like a pony and generally everything a pony had, making this thing Thunderlane’s type of species, a pony. It seemed to have the coat colour of violet, although the darkness could have fooled Thunderlane’s eyes. It was an earth pony. At least it didn’t seem to have any wings or horns anywhere. The pony also seemed to be a mare, judging by the shapes of its body.
With Thunderlane watching, the mare literally opened the tree, almost tearing it two, with bare hooves, lifted the upper part upwards and stuck one hoof in, as if she was trying to dig something out of the tree.
“Hmm. Let’s see if we have a pony’s tongue here,” she said and started pulling out things.
“A Cat’s, a rat’s, a dog’s and a wild hog’s, but no tongue of pony here,” she said, pulling out four things that seemed to be tongues of different animals judging by both the resemblance and what she had just said. “That means you still have yours in your mouth.”
The mare placed the upper half of the tree safely on top of the lower half and suddenly the parts were fused together again, as if nothing had ever happened to them. She turned around, looked at Thunderlane and started walking towards him. Seeing the mare get closer caused Thunderlane to panic a bit and he tried to use his hooves to back away from the approaching mare, but found them quite useless. There was only a single thing he could do to stop the mare from doing whatever she was going to do.
“Stop!” Thunderlane shouted, slight panic in his voice. The mare stopped and observed Thunderlane for a second or two before speaking up again.
“There we go, it wasn’t that hard. Now, can you do other words or is your vocabulary extremely limited for an adult stallion like you? We could start off with you telling me your name. That sounds like an easy task, doesn’t it?” the mare asked, looking at Thunderlane and cocking her head to the side a bit. Now that Thunderlane was able to get a better look, her actual coat colour seemed to be a bit lighter than the actual violet, but Thunderlane had never been too good with colours and their names, so he just decided that the coat of the mare was light violet.
But the coat was not the important thing about the mare. The most important and extraordinary thing was, by far, the propeller beanie the mare was wearing. No matter how much Thunderlane tried, he couldn’t get his eyes off the hat. It simply didn’t make sense. The mare seemed to notice this too, judging by the look she gave.
“Admiring my fabulous headpiece, are you now? How nice, a lady always likes to get noticed. And that is what colts aim for, making ladies feel nice. Complicated stuff,” she said, clearly getting a little distracted. Thunderlane used this opportunity.
“Who are you?” he asked, bringing the mare back into reality.
“Well isn’t that rude of you, I asked you first. Answer my question and I’ll answer yours,” she said, obviously getting a bit frustrated. Thunderlane had no other option but to give away some information about himself to this pony that seemed like a total lunatic, an action he was surely going to regret later on.
“Mine is Thunderlane. Now, tell me yours,” he said, attempting to take on a bit more formal tone as he realised that everything he had said before had been said with his drunken, somewhat-slurred voice.
“Thou asketh for me to give away my name and abandon my anonymity?” she replied while performing a motion with her hoof, a motion that surely had some kind of a meaning Thunderlane didn’t understand. He decided to repeat the question, as he really wanted to know who he could report to the local police station after this incident was over.
“Tell me your name,” he said, gaining an offended look in return.
“And why should I tell it to you?” the mare answered.
“Because you said you’d answer my question. What is your name? That is my question,” Thunderlane replied, getting quite annoyed by this whole situation.
“Yes, I do recall doing so, but your question, word-to-word, was ‘Who are you?’. That is the question I’m going to answer, if you would be a dear and keep your mouth shut for a second and give me the time to put together a valid sentence,” the mare said. It took a while for Thunderlane to understand, but eventually he realised that there was, in fact, an offense hidden into that blur of fancy talk the mare had spat out. Just as he was about to shout an angry ‘hey!’ at the mare, she opened her mouth and provided Thunderlane with the answer to his question.
“I am the thing that resides in every single one of you. I am the thing that is often shunned and even locked away. Yet, still, I am the thing that has been there, creating every single one of the greatest achievements of the ponykind. I am the wisest stallion to walk on the surface of this planet and I am the poor fellow locked into a padded white room. I am your mayor, your friends, you mother, your father and you. Who am I, you ask?” the mare said and started slowly walking closer to Thunderlane. He tried to retreat, return to the path and just run away and have a police officer or two scan the area in the morning, but his hooves were bound to the ground by the roots of the nearest tree. He was unable to move and the mare was getting closer and closer, a wicked grin on her face. When her face was only inches away from Thunderlane’s, she stopped, leaned over, positioned her lips close to Thunderlane’s left ear and whispered:
“I am madness.”
Chapter Two: The Morning After
The first rays of the rising sun were shining through Cloudchaser’s window, which she had forgotten to block with the curtains. Those rays took over the whole room, except for the two corners they simply couldn’t reach because of some obstructions, and illuminated pretty much everything, especially the pony laying on the soft-looking mattress over the finely-carved wooden bed. This pony, who was currently in Cloudchaser’s bed, was nopony else but Cloudchaser herself, about to wake up because of those cursed rays and be met by the aftermath of the party she had hosted last night. The property and the furniture were fine as her guests, consisting of her friends, were not the kind of ponies to go on a drunken rampage inside her house and break everything they saw. The aftermath consisted mostly of the battle between the pony and the hangover.
Cloudchaser slowly forced her eyes open, trying to avoid being blinded by the light, but once her eyes were fully open she could feel the pain worthy of thousand hammers rammed directly into her head make its way through her brains, spreading into her whole head and causing her to squint in pure agony. Why was she such a drinker when she hosted a party with free booze?
She rolled over in the bed, letting the ceiling have a look of what seemed to be the mother of all morning manes and pressed her face against the soft pillow, effectively blocking the light and granting her eyes some much-needed rest.
She was almost getting nice and cozy – even the headache was easing up a bit – when she heard a knock. Now just who would come to Cloudchaser’s place this early – assuming that it in fact was early – and knock on the door? Surely nopony with anything important.
That was Cloudchaser’s opinion and her final decision was to ignore the knock and stay in bed, safe from the devilish outside world that was all bright and noisy and so on. But when the knock repeated itself, she knew that the only way to get rid of it was to get up, go to the door and answer it. She cursed under her breath, letting out some quite colourful combinations of letters, got up from her bed, stood still on the floor for a couple of seconds in order to make sure that her hooves were able carry her weight and started making it towards the door, never stopping the cursing.
When she finally arrived at the door she took a deep breath, ran a hoof through her mane a couple of times, attempting to make it look even a bit better and opened the door, ready to accuse the pony behind it of disturbing her sleep and numerous other things.
But when the first sight to meet her was a tearful, silently sobbing light gray colt, she could do nothing but drop those thoughts and plans and decide to do her best to make this little colt feel better and lose those tears. Especially because she knew this colt.
“Rumble, what’s wrong?” she asked, causing another sniffle to escape the colt.
“Miss Cloudchaser, have you seen Thunderlane? He didn’t come home last night and I’m really worried,” the colt, known by everypony as Rumble, answered. Cloudchaser could see that it took him a ton of effort to keep himself from starting to weep.
“Well, he was here last night, but I have not seen him since he left,” Cloudchaser answered, trying to think of all the possible places where Thunderlane could have gone. Among the most likely places were the local bars that usually closed when it was past midnight and the ditches around the path that led from Cloudchaser’s place to the part of the town where Thunderlane and Rumble lived. After a while of thinking, she decided that it was best to check the ditches first.
“But I have a couple of ideas. But we need some help. Go to the police station and try to get some of the officers to help. After that, come to the park. I’ll go there and start looking around. We’ll meet there, okay?” she said and looked straight into the colt’s eyes.
“Okay,” Rumble answered in a quiet voice and started trotting towards the centre of the town, head hanging low. Cloudchaser felt sorry for the colt. It was not his fault that Thunderlane was good with alcohol but not-so-good with its effects.
She looked after the colt until he was out of her field of vision, closed the door behind her making sure that it was locked and started trotting towards the park.
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The park area was large. Every citizen of Ponyville was proud of the huge park and the beautiful nature the town had to offer. It was really something when compared to the streets of Canterlot, where you were lucky if you even saw a leaf, not to even mention a fully-grown tree. Only the royal garden had something natural growing in it.
But Cloudchaser was not in the park to look at the trees and the nature. She was there to look for her drunken friend. But the size of the area was making this difficult to do alone. She was hoping for Rumble to come back soon, but she also knew how hard it was to try to get the police officers working on the early-morning shift to lift their bottoms from the chairs of the station and the fact that a little colt was asking for them to come to the park and look for a missing drunkard was making the chances of getting backup beyond Rumble even less likely.
But Cloudchaser didn’t let the facts crush the little optimism she had left. Surely it couldn’t be too hard to find Thunderlane. She had spent numerous nights with him and had gotten used to the drunken form of her friend. She knew that when Thunderlane was drunk, he would easily bump into things and get into fights with everything he bumped into before passing out on a random spot, usually a ditch he had fallen into, and staying there for the whole night unless one of his friends managed to wake him up or drag him back home.
Thunderlane was also really good at leaving some marks of his nightly adventures. Broken twigs, damaged trees and plants, hoofsteps without a noticeable pattern and sometimes, after an extra hard night of drinking, pools of vomit. If a pony wanted to find Thunderlane, all he or she needed to do was to follow these marks.
So, now Cloudchaser was looking for those signs and marks in her attempt to locate Thunderlane. Every now and then she would see something that could have been a clue, but they always led to a dead end. A trail of hoofprints ending in front of a tree. Multiple snapped twigs and signs of a pony bumping into a tree without a sign of a pony nearby. It seemed almost like Thunderlane wasn’t the only drunkard still occupying the park. And every other drunkard made it a lot harder to find the drunkard Cloudchaser was looking for. Finding Thunderlane was starting to look a bit more unlikely.
And that’s when Thunderlane found her.
The first thing Cloudchaser heard was a twig snapping in two. Just as she was about to turn around and have a good look at the source of the sound, Thunderlane bursted out of the single dense spot among the path, running towards Cloudchaser with great speed, eyes sparkling with what seemed to be either pure madness or pure joy and a mouth that had twisted to a unnerving smile. For a second, just a second before the impact, Cloudchaser actually feared. She was afraid, shocked, simply scared of the way how her friend was running towards her. But when the two collided and Cloudchaser could both feel her back pressing against the hard soil and a wet tongue licking her face, the feeling turned mostly to confusion. The only thing she could think of doing was to try to communicate with her friend.
“Thunderlane, what are you doing?” she asked in a strict tone, expecting to get a direct answer and an apology immediately. The response, however, surprised her.
Thunderlane lifted his face up a bit, stared right into Cloudchaser’s eyes, and barked twice before lowering his head again and continuing the licking. This left Cloudchaser not only with a wet face, but also with the feeling of worry along with the ongoing feeling of confusion. What could have happened to her friend? Alcohol was an option, it always was with Thunderlane, but its effects were never this serious and would have worn off already. Another option was that Thunderlane had managed to hit his head badly and was now undergoing the effects of that. But that was unlikely and Cloudchaser really didn’t believe in it. That left her with no answers and only a single thing to do: get up, make sure the stallion would not tackle her again and get to some place where he would not reach her. She didn’t want to be around when this new form of Thunderlane would get the idea to try and test if his new friend tasted good.
So, when Thunderlane pressed his tongue against Cloudchaser’s face once again, she responded with pushing with a force enough to both surprise the stallion and throw him back enough for Cloudchaser to get up on all fours and start running. When Thunderlane recovered from the push and the surprise, Cloudchaser was already out of his reach and on her way to the edge of the park and the exit that would lead her almost directly to the part of the town where the police station was located. Thunderlane, being in his special state, though this was a new game and that he was supposed to catch his new friend. Soon the park was the stage of a bizarre, even hilarious-looking play of a pony trotting full speed, trying to escape from another pony that was running in a whole different way, barking as he did so. This went on for a good two minutes, but as Cloudchaser reached the edge of the park and the small opening between the bush fence that separated the park area from the town itself, Thunderlane stopped and just stared at the mare that was about to leave the park. Cloudchaser was not aware of this, though, as she had no intentions of looking back, even though she knew that Thunderlane had no intentions of actually harming her. She just wanted to get help as quickly as possible.
It took her another minute to reach the police station, but once she finally arrived at the front door of the building, she finally dropped the pace and took a second or two to calm down and stabilize her breath. After making sure that she could talk without having to do any of those awkward breaks for panting, she pushed the double doors in front of her opens and stepped into the lobby of the police station. Immediately upon stepping in she noticed a single familiar pony arguing with two officers significantly older than him.
“I’m telling you, my brother is in the park and I need help to find him!” Rumble tried once again, but the officers were still quite stubborn, looking at him like they looked at every single colt and filly in the town. They simply didn’t take him seriously.
“All right kid, I know you’re worried, but we’ve got some better things to do. Your brother will stumble back home eventually,” the older officer, quite possibly a higher-ranked one as well, said for the umpteenth time, sharing a roll of eyes with the younger one. Cloudchaser simply had to interrupt the argument.
“Like what? Sitting on your rump and chomping down doughnuts?” she asked in a firm tone, causing all three to look her way, the two oldest ones with a bit of a shocked look on their faces and the younger one with a look of hope. After getting no response, Cloudchaser decided to continue.
“There is indeed a stallion loose in the park and I’d dare to say that it’s your responsibility to take care of that case,” she said, causing the officers to finally catch her point and start defending themselves.
“Look, ma’am, we’d like to help but we are not the drunkard-catching squad. There is not one in this town. It’s up for the family of the drunkard to handle him,” the older one said, getting an excited “yeah!” from the younger one. Cloudchaser knew just what to say in order to win this argument here and now.
“Well, this one drunkard tackled me to ground, licked my face clean, possibly tried to bite me and generally has the mindset of an average dog. And as far as I recall, you are required to catch all the nutcases,” she said, getting confused looks in return.
“You better follow me,” she continued, turned around and ran out of the double doors, giving the officers and Rumble no other option than to follow.
The trip back to the park took a bit longer as the officers were not quite as fast as Cloudchaser and Rumble and had to take some breaks to catch their breath. But eventually they made it to the entrance and Cloudchaser motioned the others to stop.
“Okay, he should be near the entrance. I’d say we start the search from near the densest spots near this spot and then go deeper into the park if we can’t find him,” she said, getting agreeing nods from everypony, even from the older officer.
She didn’t waste time and just simply turned around, leading the group towards the rather dense patch of trees a few hundred meters from the entrance of the park. When the group arrived at the spot where the trees were growing, Cloudchaser immediately started shaking the branches of the trees and making noise, in order to try and get Thunderlane out from his hiding spot. After a few minutes of this, she could say for sure that Thunderlane was not hiding among the trees in front of her.
“Okay, he’s not here. Let’s move on towards the next possible spot,” she said and turned towards the group that was still following her. Once again she got agreeing nods and mumbles in return and started leading the group towards the another spot of dense woods in sight.
Upon arrival she repeated the actions she had performed with the previous spot and the others just stood still and watched, hesitating to join the interesting-looking act. Again, after a few minutes of shaking the branches and yelling like a madmare, she came to the conclusion that Thunderlane was not hiding among the leaves and branches of the trees that grew in this spot.
She turned around and was just about to inform the group about the location of the next spot they were going to search when she heard a loud crack that usually comes from a branch snapping in two. Almost immediately after that she could hear a loud thump and some growling coming from right behind her.
“Prepare!” she shouted just as the source of the thump, a gray stallion the townsfolk knew as Thunderlane, darted from the depths of the patch of trees and towards the leader of the group. Cloudchaser was fast with her actions as she knew what was going to happen. She managed to dodge the stallion agilely and even land on all fours while maintaining a perfect balance. Rumble was also lucky. He had the reflexes of a young colt and managed to jump to the side and avoid being tackled by his big brother. The younger officer was even luckier. He was too slow to dodge the incoming tackle, but he was the leftmost of the three ponies that had been standing behind Cloudchaser and the stallion missed him by inches. The older officer was not so lucky. The stallion was coming directly towards him and as he didn’t see the incoming attack until Cloudchaser dodged, he was caught off guard.
Only a few seconds after Cloudchaser had told everypony in the group to prepare, the scene had changed completely. The somewhat-well organised group had now pretty much turned into chaos. Cloudchaser was standing on all fours with an amused look on her face, looking at Thunderlane and the officer he was lying on. Rumble was lying on his stomach on the ground because of the dodge he had performed. The younger officer was standing still, pretty much frozen to spot and just looking at the struggling of his co-worker. The older officer was lying under Thunderlane, struggling and cursing loudly, waving his hooves and looking helpless. And Thunderlane was lying on top of the older officer, a genuinely happy look on his face and licking the face of the older officer, getting a blur of curses in return every time he lifted his tongue off the face of the officer.
Cloudchaser was the first one to do something useful. She walked toward Thunderlane, stopped at a safe distance, poked him with his forehoof, getting his attention, and started running while shouting “Everypony follow me!”
When Thunderlane felt the poke, he immediately turned towards the source of it and when he saw Cloudchaser running away with great speed, he immediately bounced up and started chasing the running mare in an attempt to catch her. It took a while for the others to process the orders the mare had given them, but soon enough they were running after her as well.
If a passer-by had been watching the situation, he or she would have seen the bizarre sight of a pony running away from a pony that behaved like a dog that seemed to be chased by two police officers and a colt.
Soon Cloudchaser reached the opening in the bush fence. Upon passing through it she slowed down a little and took a quick look back to make sure that Thunderlane was still following her. That quick look revealed that the stallion, in fact, was still after her and had not stopped when she had reached the edge of the park. This suited her plan perfectly. She kept on running past the buildings and towards her goal near the centre of the town.
It took her no more than a minute to reach the police station. Upon arrival she stopped, turned around and prepared for what was going to come. She saw Thunderlane getting closer and closer with a look of pure joy on his face. The stallion must have thought that now he would catch the mare. But what he didn’t notice was the little signs Cloudchaser was giving. She bent her knees, unfurled her wings a little and stared straight into the eyes of the stallion.
Just as Thunderlane was about to tackle Cloudchaser to the ground, she jumped up in the air, fully unfurled her wings and started flapping. Everything went just as she had planned. When Thunderlane noticed that the mare had disappeared, he started looking around with the look of joy changed into one of confusion. It took him about five seconds to notice the hovering pegasus above him. A pony would have understood that he or she would not have been able to reach the mare without the help of wings, but Thunderlane was not entirely pony any more. So he positioned himself under the mare that was floating above him and started jumping up in an attempt to pull the mare down. But every time he jumped, Cloudchaser flapped her wings a bit harder, gaining some altitude and dodging the grabbing attempts of the stallion.
This went on for a couple of minutes, until the other three members of the group arrived. When Cloudchaser noticed them, she decided that it was time to start the final phase of her plan.
“Quickly! Tackle him!” she shouted. The others were a bit faster to react this time and soon Thunderlane was pinned down by the two officers. Now that Thunderlane was captured, Cloudchaser quickly dropped down to the ground and gave the one final order.
“Get him inside and make sure he doesn’t escape. I’m going to get somepony that can help with this case,” she said and the officers nodded in unison. After that Cloudchaser took off again and started heading towards her next target. She should get somepony to help and she knew just the pony to do the job.
