OUTLIERS
A MLP:FIM fanfiction by SnakeFire.
MLP:FIM© Is a trademark of Hasbro and Lauren Faust.
Don’t sue my ass. Seriously, I have no money.
The Mareieam Webster dictionary defines outlier as “A pony or thing situated away or detached from the main body or system.” Outliers are generally above average; ponies with some talent that makes them unique in their field. In the world I live in, this is tantamount to a crime. To be an outlier is to differ from the norm; to differ from the norm is to cause discord among your brothers and sisters; to cause discord is to watch the word crumble beneath your very hooves. Or so we were told, a mantra pounded into us since we were foals, that to differ was to make a critical mistake for all of ponydom. Lies. All of it lies. In truth, freedom and individuality are what make the world a decent place to live in. my freedom to write and express myself as I pleased, my gifts and talents; these basic expulsions of fleeting freedom would be the cornerstone in the repair of that which was damaged beyond all hope of salvation.
I sit here and pen this, and my epic has come full circle. The teller of tales, the writer of lands….This is my story’s humble beginning.
~~~
I moaned. Casting a furtive glance down to my hoof, I groaned even louder when I saw the time. Around one hoof, all citizens were issued with an arcano-tech hoofband. It really was a fantastic piece of technology- truly a marvel. It told you the time, played music on the radio, had a live chat feature, and also made tracking down dissidents and forcing the populace to work a cakewalk. Oh, and it also literally chained you to your desk. A magical linking beam bound me to my workstation. With little else to do, I cast my gaze around my cubicle. Pretty basic. I had four walls and a desk, which is a hell of a lot better than most other ponies got. On my desk was a pokey-stick-thing, for typing on the keyboard, and a telescreen. I sighed and looked at the small piece of paper before me, detailing the day’s work order.
I hefted the pokey thing and started writing. Type type type. The day’s work order was a list, detailing all the various projects I should have completed for the end of the day. My projects were things along the lines of “come up with some poster slogans” “type up an article correcting Celestia’s mistake” that kind of thing. The princess had been painted up as an omnipotent deity, caring for all her little ponies. I moaned a little. I needed to come up with a morale boosting slogan for a poster. Hmmm……I hit a few keys when an idea hit home. Keep calm and carry on! With one thing completed off the list, I had successfully bought myself ten minutes. My workblock was heavily regulated, and it was all tied in with the hoofbands. They recorded how much work you filled in an hour; the minimum was one thing off the checklist every ten minutes.
As I typed, I allowed my mind to wander a bit. Writing had always come easily to me; I seemed to have a gift for it. This allowed for less productive trains of thought in the foreground while my magic did all the work in the background. Thinking of special gifts, my eyes flicked down to my flank.
On my flank is the standard black sun icon. I hear whispers sometimes, whispers that ponies used to have these magical flank-marks called “cutie marks.” Each pony used to have a “cutie mark” that was unique to them. Huh. Unique. That’s something I sure don’t know about. I’m just another pony in the rank and file. My coat is a bleached white, like everypony else’s. My mane is bright blue, and my eyes are bright red. It’s an unusual color, to be sure. Actually, it’s supposed to be illegal. Ponies with any eye colour other than the uniform blue (i.e. all of them) have special contact lenses surgically attached. You can’t take them out, ever. The lenses are actually an organic compound- and one I’m horribly allergic to. Because of my allergy, I got an exemption from the rule. Lucky me.
I wasn’t always this way- I half-remember being very different when I was little. Back when the world was a different place. Oh yes. Different. I sighed and cast my eyes down to my flank. You know, while I was thinking of plot tattoos. Again, I don’t have one- I have a uniform brand, the marking for a sun. the same as everyone else. Same, same, same. How I hate being the same. I peered out of my tiny cubicle to see if anypony was coming down the dimly lit corridor. There was nopony in the hallway, and I had…..ten…nine minutes to myself before they came to check why I wasn’t working. Quickly, while you still can, I thought to myself as I ducked back in to my cubicle. This was my secret shame. I loved doing this, but it was something that was very much illegal. I really couldn’t care less- nobody was coming,
I fired up the typing program and then- after navigating through a series of safeguards- reached my documents folder. My private documents. As in, documents that were mine. Private. Not anypony else’s, but mine. I hovered the cursor over a particular file and paused to have a good, long, think about weather or not I wanted to click that button. I lowered the pokey stick onto the cursor-pad to click it- when I heard the sound of clanking, armored footsteps. I hastily clicked the right sequence of keys to exit out of my private space, and re-enter the standard typing program. I muffled a curse as I looked down at my hoofband. The little green alert light was blipping- I immediately cursed my foolishness. I had spent a full eleven minutes on my story. To save face, I immediately began working on the next thing on the list; an article about how perfection and the norm were the highest ideals. I started typing up a storm. It wasn’t really going to do anything; the hoofband still blipped silently. The guards had been summoned to investigate and probably provided a full incident report too.
That’s when the guard walked in, along with a hooded Acolyte. This one wore a golden pin on their breast- denoting them as one of the high council. This was supposedly a great honor. The royal Acolytes were her majesty’s chosen ones, and were supposedly distinct from the rest of ponykind. This was one of the high-ranking ones, if the rumors were true- the white pegasus. Their wings were folded tightly on the outside of their black-cowled robes. They produced a small lighted wand from their robes- the Acolytes all had telekinetic abilities to some degree. All I knew was that that wand was about to make my life very unpleasant indeed. They waved the wand in the general direction of my telescreen, forcing it to show the work I’d been doing. All the reports flashed across it, as the cowled figure silently judged them all. Their earth pony attendant stood there stoically, a great hulking brute identical to me in coat color and mane hue, the only difference in the golden-gray armour he wore.
The stream of text- the thousands upon thousands of words I’d typed, scrolling before the Acolyte- finally stopped at what they were looking for. They placed a hoof on the scrollpad, and with a dismissive flick, scrolled through it. I realized with no small amount of horror that this was my private file.The private file was not work- it was something that the rumors called a story. I loved my story. It was the only colour, the only spice in an otherwise bland and colorless life. They scrolled though it dismissively- the pony seemed to be scouring the document deeply. What I didn’t get was why she hadn’t just seen that I was infringing on the work laws. What? Why…why was she…..reading…my story? Maybe…..
Maybe they liked it?
A lot? The very thought of somepony- hell, anypony- liking my labor of love was a thought that gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling.
Maybe they-
“This is absolute garbage. That you would DARE waste your work hours away writing a piece of potch like this is downright criminal. Take him….take him to reeducation. We must make an example of him.” The- now-rather-obviously female Acolyte said. My brain did a flip-flop trying to process this new information. Absolute…..garbage? I’d had plans to submit my manuscript to the higher-ups at the local street paper…..but it looked like…..I hung my head in shame. How could I have thought I was any different from the rank and file….. I just stood there limply, suddenly fascinated by the floor. Ooh, hey. I never noticed it was grey linoleum. Oh wait, I did. Because everything in my world was gray. The guard strode forward, and rearing up on his hind legs, grabbed me and slipped an enchanted collar around my neck. Oh sweet Celestia.
Anti-magic collars are not actually that safe for the wearer in question. Unicorns’ bodies are magically reinforced against the constant stream of arcane energy constantly flowing through them; in fact, it is intrinsically linked with various body functions and so forth. Cut off from that stream of magic, I felt my vision start to swim. I wobbled unsteadily on my hooves. My thoughts felt like they were swimming through cherry syrup; as my vision swam, I hardly noticed as my hooves fell out from under me. I started to black out.
The last thing I recall before I blacked out completely was the earth pony hefting me onto his back.
~~~~
“1213201518!” the voice called. That was my number, my designation. I shuffled out of my cold concrete cell. According to my hoofband, I’d been here three days. Not that day and night mattered to anypony, what with the perpetual cloud cover obscuring the sun from view. The few times I’d been allowed outside, all I had seen was gray, depressing cityscapes as far as the eye could see. There were no yellows or reds or oranges or greens- all those colors were long lost to me, the only proof that they had ever existed my memories alone. The only places to see red, yellow, and orange were on the bright and cheery propaganda posters slathering the walls. For the Solar Empire, All hail princess Celestia, etc. etc. etc. I’d typed up my fair share of these slogans, I dimly noted as I trotted down the hall with the rest o the incarcerates. The dull, defeated look in their eyes was further proof- I was the only free soul here. We shuffled down to the large feeding area, stomachs rumbling for simulated vegetables and grass that tasted more like dirt than anything else. I’d heard rumors of fresh fruit and had only the faintest memories of it, but from what little I could recall, it was simply divine.
Standing before the feeding area was a large arch- the reapplicator. It reapplied the white sheen to our coats, and was mandatory to be fed. Honestly, prison or my workblock- it was the exact same. Everywhere was the same, and to be honest it was starting to drive me up the wall. I walked into the machine, automatically closing my eyes and holding my breath as the reapplicator dyed all the sprouting hairs back to the standard permitted colors. The machine stopped whirring and spinning, and I stepped out feeling like I had just taken a shower in my respiteblock. Uhhhghh….. The slimy dye was always unpleasant and left one with the feeling that they were covered in jelly.
I trotted over to the feeding queue. Nopony said anything- they never did. Silently we shuffled, the white and the grey and the bland, bland brown of the muck I was fed day in and day out all blurred together for me. I robotically accepted my helping of nutrient-enriched sludge, and automatically spun to find a table. Ideally, we were supposed to fill the gridded tables in order, and leave in sequence, but nopony ever did. This was about the one point in the day where I saw any real life in anypony’s eyes, as they attempted to quietly chat amongst each other. There wasn’t much to talk about- what I was taken aback by was how much different the prison was in this regard. Unlike my workblock, the ponies here actually seemed to be enjoying their idle chatter. The conversations, I swiftly realized, were all of the “So what are you in here for” variety, but I couldn’t care less. I was about to sit at the first available seat I saw, when I saw him.
I cast a furtive glance around the room. Nopony else seemed to be looking at him. How could they not be looking at him??? He was special, unique. Red. Oh my Celestia, red. His coat. Was. Red. He sat alone at a white plastic table for four, staring at the mush. I trotted over with excitement. Oh my Celestia. He was different! I almost squealed with glee. I trotted over, throwing caution to the wind, and sat down at his table. The pony looked up at me in shock, and I recoiled. His eyes. They were bloodshot, great veins pulsing visibly along the pinkish surface. His irises were bright green, and they were centered on two mismatched pupils. They dilated in response to the harsh fluorescent light behind me, different sized pupils shrinking back. Their owner followed them, as he made himself as small as possible. He was a pegasus pony, and his wings and forehooves twitched constantly. Tiny tremors ran along his body as he stared up at me in mismatched fright.
I immediately felt bad for my actions. I sat down at the table, and gave the strange pony my warmest smile, (an expression I rarely wore). His eyes jittered in their sockets. Oh no, that wasn’t creepy at all. He slowly uncurled a foreleg, and cautiously pointed at me. “Name?” he said, in a strange voice. It sounded like he had no control over his pitch; It alternated between high and low. His hoof, I noted, almost had….burn marks on it. His portion of…. “food”…. was smaller than mine- much smaller, and it seemed he’d been on that diet for quite a while, if his ribs were anything to go by. I looked at my tray, and then at his, and then back to mine. Looking quickly to make sure no guards were watching, I telekinetically threw somepony’s tray three tables over at somepony else. The table I’d chosen had a unicorn at it, and of course a fight broke out. The guard standing adjacent to our table immediately went to go break up the fighting. There. Diversion complete. I immediately divided my food into two portions, wordlessly floating the larger half onto the red pegasi’s plate. He looked at the chaos I’d caused, and then down at his tray. His jittering eyes flicked from the plate to my face. Then to the plate again. “…F..food?” he said. “Food?”
I nodded.
The pony started shoveling that gunk like he hadn’t in three weeks. Literally shoveling; he completely ignored the spoon and instead opted for his hooves. I magically managed to save the tray from being devoured as well. As I slowly placed the tray back on the table, the pony looked at me. He cocked his head and seemed to think for a bit, tapping a hoof to his lower lip. His wings quivered in time to the tapping. He cocked his head.
“…Friend?” He asked after a rather long pause. I smiled. Friendship wasn’t exactly something I was very familiar with, at all. My eyes flitted to a poster adorning the wall. Report all lawbreakers to your nearest Acolyte helper immediately. I rolled my eyes. No wonder I had no friends. There were always a few suckups who enjoyed cozying up to the Acolytes by reporting every Twilight, Derpy, and Hooveses for every potential crime that could be committed, ever. Hence the reason I was so secretive about my story- I hadn’t showed it to anyone because the reporting system was entirely anonymous.
The red pony frowned and smacked my hoof, snapping me back into the present.
“Friend?” he queried, his tone more assertive than before.
I paused. Could I trust this pony? He certainly seemed to have a few…a lot….some…. issues. I thought about it very deeply. This pony was extremely different. But as I thought, I realized something key. If this pony was untrustworthy, if he really was not my friend, the second I threw the tray he would have screamed for the guards. He was the only one who saw me break the rules and he let me be. He allowed me to help him. He…he trusted me.
I looked him in the eye and smiled. “Friend.”
The strange pony beamed brightly. His crooked smile exuded an aura of warmth, and his normally creepy eyes sparkled joyously. In the presence of such infectious happiness I found myself smiling too. A chaotic battle raged three tables over, but it was merely background noise to my internal stew of thoughts. I now had a friend. My first real friend, I was sure. He was strange and somewhat scary, but he seemed kind enough at heart. I wasn’t entirely sure what to do now that I had a friend. Do I hug him? Start talking to him? I gave him a quick glance up and down and my eyes rested on his hip. I raised an eyebrow.
The pony’s hip bore a strange, curious marking that was not the standard sun crest. It was a….well. It actually looked kind of like a fireball. I smiled at my new friend and pointed at his rump.
“What’s that?” I asked him politely.
He gave me a toothy grin, and thumped his chest. “Fast.” He then began to lick the tray I had saved from being devoured just a few seconds earlier. I cocked my head. Fast? Huh? Weren’t the individual designs supposed to show your true talents? I turned to mine. Beneath the sun icon I didn’t know what was under it- if anything. Now I was really curious. What could be below that icon? It could be anything. I could be anything from a famous wizard to a farmer and not know it.
My musings were interrupted not long after their conception by my circular train of thought looping back to its disjointed source: the red pony. I happened to have a small issue with him; the issue was that I didn’t know what to call him. I couldn’t just go about calling him “You” or “Red coat”. Surely he had a numerical designation. I usually referred to anypony I interacted with frequently by the first two numbers of their designation. I loudly cleared my throat.
“What’s your designation, friend?” I asked politely.
“Name.” he said absentmindedly.
“Name?” I replied, “What’s yours, then?”
He looked at me and got a look of extreme concentration on his face. He opened his mouth and slowly said, “name….isss……Tw…Blit…..Twit….” his voice petered off. He began to hammer his hooves into the table, and it actually seemed to buckle a bit under the force of his blows. His face was a dark red as he snarled an made strange, animalistic screeching-grunting noises. I grabbed his hoof with one of mine and began to stroke it gently. the evident rage and bloodlust in his eyes slowly dissipated.
“So you can’t say it. Tell you what. Can I call you…..Twitch?”
He nodded eagerly. He smiled broadly and clopped his hooves together in glee.
“Twitch! Twitch Twitch Twitch Twitch!” he said, rolling it around as though trying to swallow a new type of…. “food.” The pony that had formerly been looking at my neck as though he was going to snap it now wore an expression of deep contemplation. He reached over the table and placed a hoof on my chest.
“Name?” He asked.
“1213201518” I automatically responded.
His face darkened, and he growled at me. “Scribe.” He snapped.
I cocked an eyebrow. “Huh?”
He pressed the hoof into my chest once. “Scribe.”
He…he was calling me scribe. Scribe. I had a name?
I had a name.
~~~~
Prison was less fun than my workblock in other regards, although “fun” is relative measure in our brave new Equestria. How was it less fun? Well, remember those burn marks on Twitch’s hoof? Turns out I wasn’t supposed to talk to him. At all. There was a reason he was sitting alone. The higher ups didn’t take too kindly to me extending the hoof of friendship. Before I could even eat my meager plate of “food”, a bunch of Acolytes came out of a side door and began trotting towards us. Seeing them, I followed Twitch and began to hoark that sludge down posthaste. It was awful, but it stopped my stomach rumbling. I glanced over to Twitch, and he had a look of complete terror. As the Acolytes closed in, Twitches eye’s dilated to pinpoints and he started to scream. He shrieked at the top of his lungs, tears streaming form his eyes as he stared at me pleadingly. I grabbed Twitch’s hoof and began to stroke it soothingly. The Acolytes closed in on us in a ring. The lead Acolyte took a step towards us. He wore the standard black robes, but with a silver broach pinned to his left breast. I was unafraid of these guys. Twitch, on the other hand, was terrified. He held on to my hoof like a life raft, tears streaming from his eyes.
The lead Acolyte cleared his throat loudly. “1213201518. Please step away from subject X. Now.” It wasn’t a question, and I flatly refused to comply. I shook my head.
“His name is Twitch.” I stated loudly, “And he’s my friend. And he’s clearly terrified. With Twitch this scared, a good friend would not leave his side. So no, I’m not stepping away from this table.”
The Acolyte’s faces are all cowled, making it impossible to see their facial expressions, but they exuded an aura of smugness that was impossible to ignore. “As you wish.” The leader said.
Twitch whimpered.
~~~~~
I whimpered quietly to myself in pain, cradling my hoof. The Acolytes were merciless to those who opposed them, and I had recently incurred the full brunt of their wrath. The Acolytes had dragged Twitch and I into the bowels of the prisonblock. There was a large machine there, white like everything else, with a small hole in the centre of a circular face, large enough for a hoof. They forced my hoof inside and fired it up. Ouch. Turned out the inside is lined with Celestia-damned cattle prods. Small wonder, then that Twitch was terrified of them. Even worse, they had locked the two of us in the zero room. The zero room was a blank gray cube. There was no clocks, no timepieces of any sort. Even hoofbands, annoying as they were, were forbidden in here. It played off an old torture technique- deprive the victim of their sense of time and wait for them to crack. This becomes more poignant when you couple it with the threat of future injury.
Twitch sat on the other side of the room, muttering to himself quietly. The silence was overpowering- it had become tangible, and insufferable. I took a deep breath. Desperate to break the silence, I asked a question that had been burning in the back of my mind for a while now.
“Twitch?” the red-coat looked up. “Twitch…why are you here?” Twitch looked at me and smiled. A look of deep focus crossed his face, and he slowly stuttered out,
“I here…because….Twitch….special.” he choked out. “Scared.”
I trotted across the tiny cube and rested a hoof on Twitch’s shoulder. “You’re scared?”
Twitch’s face darkened. “NO!” he screeched. “NO!”
I edged away from Twitch a bit. I know this sounds difficult to swallow, but I kept forgetting how mentally unstable Twitch actually was. He seemed to swing between bouts of lucidity, piled on top of all his other problems. One thing I was dying to know was, how in the hell did he avoid getting his coat dyed white like the rest of us? And If he wasn’t scared, then who was? Could it be that….perhaps….
They were scared of him?
And maybe….me?
That thought confused me greatly. All I’d done was write one story, and it wasn’t even that good. Besides, what threat would a story present? I had written that story for the fun of it; the Acolytes seemed to think that I was committing some kind of war crime by doing so. As I thought about my story, I smiled a little as I remembered what had seemed to happen as I wrote. The world around me had seemed to change; gray walls becoming like canvas for my tale, colors appearing, shapes twisting, warping and forming as I wrote. I was proud of my story; even here and even now. I looked at the other side of the room as I mused, where I saw Twitch living up to his name in a corner of the cube. I hefted my bulk off the softly glowing white floor and trotted over. I saw him slowly shuddering and whimpering and I concluded he needed something to take his mind off of what was going on. Luckily, I had just the thing.
“Twitch?” he turned to me. “Can I tell you a story?”
~~~
“And then, Derpy dove downwards to pin down that bad blue-coated pony. Oh, she smacked him senseless, Twitch! And then she….” I had been going on about my story for what felt like hours. Zero room, no clocks. Not like it mattered. Twitch was enthralled by my vivid description of the story I’d woven. The look in his mismatched eyes was one of utter fascination. He listened intently as I wove him my tale of the adventures of the Doctor in his blue box, the hero of time, aided by a derp-eyed pegasus pony as he went about saving the universe. I wrapped up my story slowly, and Twitch listened intently to the bittersweet ending I’d concocted. The ending of the story had been concocted as a real tear-jerker, and Twitch’s funky eyes actually shed a few tears as I regaled the tragedy that befell them before ‘The end’.
Twitch smiled at I finished. My throat was dry and I had talked myself hoarse, and as I smacked my lips together Twitch simply said, “gift.”
“Wh…what?” I croaked. “What….gift? I’m good at that?” Twitch nodded intently.
I felt myself swell with pride. Well, it was a good story. Actually, it was a great story, I thought. Twitch was wearing a bittersweet smile. All the stories we had been told as foals were all propaganda-filled, plot-holed, dues-ex-machina filled messes. I smiled joyfully at Twitch. “You really think so?”
“K…know so.” He stuttered out.
Warm fuzzy feelings bubbled up again. Praise, I realized, was sweeter than the fruit I barely remembered eating. As I sat there basking in my joy, the door to the room opened and an Acolyte walked in.
“Hah. You call that a story?” he asked, “I’ve seen drunk monkeys write better. Honestly, why do you bother? You shouldn’t have tried. I listened to the whole thing, mate.” He laughed sadistically, and my happy elated balloon popped. I hung my head in shame, despair seeping into every crack and crevice of my mind. The door swung shut, and I hardly noticed, as hot salty tears of failure trickled out of my eyes. I stared at the blank gray floor that almost seemed to glow a bit. Blank, bland, and grey- that’s all I wa-
A foreleg sliding over my shoulder interrupted my woe-is-me train of thought. The foreleg twitched a little bit, and I looked up to see its owner wordlessly copying my earlier attempts at comfort. Twitch smiled at me. “Liar.” was all he said. I sighed. Twitch was right, which was actually kind of weird. Wasn’t I the sane one? Whatever. No matter what, he was right. And that’s all that mattered. I looked up and took a deep breath before looking Twitch square in the eyes.
“You’re not really crazy, are you?”
He looked up at the ceiling for a few minutes before looking back at me with a mischievous smile. “Maybe.”
I sighed deeply. “Whatever. At least we're in this together. I’d like to get you out of here, Twitch. I still don’t know why they haven’t assimilated you yet. I really, truly don’t. Whatever the reason, you’ve been hurt enough. Too bad escaping would be nigh-on impossible, what with us being in the zero room and the hoofbands and-”
I froze mid-sentence, and looked down at my hoof. My hoofband had been removed so I couldn’t tell the time. But that also meant that their primary method of tracking me was gone as well. Twitch wasn’t wearing one either. And didn’t that Acolyte say he heard me through the door?
~~~~~
“OI!” I shouted as I pounded on the door. No windows, no openings. One way in, one way out. I pounded some more. “HELLLP MEE!!! HE’S GONE CRAZY!!” I screamed. Twitch cast me a confused look, and I winked. We had earlier discussed- (well, I say discussed- a more accurate description was I articulated the plan and Twitch gave his monosyllabic feedback.) a simple plan for getting out of the zero room. Part of the plan had included the actual escape, but the more important segment was what to do when we were outside. I was initially stumped on what to do. I had to feed two fully grown ponies a decent amount, with the only food I knew of being synthetically grown. The plan had been drawn on the floor using the dye from my not-quite-fully-dry-yet coat.
I informed Twitch that I had absolutely no clue about what we were going to do after our escape. We were collected several more times to have our hooves jammed into the cattle prod machine, leaving small segments of time where Twitch and I were unable to do anything but for the pain. it seemed Twitch did have some idea of what to do after that part. He didn’t verbally tell me, but he drew a picture on the floor with his hoof that indicated that he’d take care of that bit, if only I got us outside.
Twitch nodded and started acting like he had gone off the deep end. Um, for real I mean. He snarled and shrieked, and ran up to me, grabbing my neck. UM, TWITCH???!!?! He started squeezing! HE WAS ACTUALLY STRANGLING ME! “HELP ME! HELP! HELP HE’S STRANGLING ME HEEELLLLLPPP!!!”
The door flew open. A junior Acolyte came charging in, black robes knocked askew as she loudly demanded what was going on. The words died in her throat as it became quite clear exactly what. She charged towards Twitch. It was at that point that I realized that I could still breathe. Twitch had wrapped his hooves round my neck, and was applying pressure, enough to alarm, but not enough to cause any serious damage. The Acolyte attempted to get Twitch off of me. There was a nanosecond of time where I saw, out of the corner of my eye, Twitch hesitate to counterattack his assailant. Fear was a powerful motivator, and my newfound friend had every incentive to bow to it and surrender.
Twitch gulped as the Acolyte wrestled with him. From my upside-down point of view it seemed as though Twitch was arguing with himself. I heard him faintly whisper something, something I didn’t quite catch; it had a melodic ring to it, almost sounding like a snippet of a song. Whatever it was, it seemed to give my friend courage. Twitch swelled a little. He snapped at the Acolyte with his teeth; she retreated back a step or two. She charged again, and removed a hoof from my neck and bringing it down in a swift hoof-chop across her neck.
The black-coated bugger went down like a sack of mouldy hay.
Twitch released me.
“Take.” He said, pointing a hoof at the pile of swaddling robes that held an unconscious Acolyte. I magically reached out and whipped the robes off the unconscious form. On the Acolyte’s person, we found a strange, thin swirled wand. Upon closer inspection however I discovered that this wand…was….carved from a….
Oh Celestia.
A unicorn’s horn.
I just stared at the wand. The intricate spiraling of the horn, along with the slenderness, indicated the horn had belonged to a male. I gave the wand a quick flick through the air. It felt light, like the foam mattress in my respiteblock. I quickly thought back to what I knew about horns. I recalled that as a pony got older, their horn got heavier. The light, springy layers of tissue in the centre slowly hardened- for some reason this was called the “heartwood.” Judging by the lightness of the wand, I guessed that it had been carved out of the horn of a teenager.
My heart caught in my chest. That poor kid…cutting off a unicorn’s horn isn’t something like simply depriving them of their magic. Unconsciously we are all connected to the great web of magic, a web that, in spite of ponykind’s best efforts, we still remain firmly connected to. If you cut off a unicorn’s horn, they will still be able to channel their magic, just not as well. No, in order to allow this wand to actually perform magic, they actually had to force this kid to cast the most horrendous spell in existence. I sunk a magical tendril into the horn. Inside I found a piece of irrevocable proof that confirmed my suspicions. The wand was a source of magic. I received some basic teachings about magical theory- standard protocol for all unicorns. They taught me all the important things about magic; how to cast spells, how to do telekinesis, etc. One of the things I was taught is that magical sources rarely occur in nature- everything is connected to the web. Everything.
This kid, in his final moments, wasn’t.
They forced him to cast a spell in which he uptook as much magic as he possibly could, and then cut himself off from the web. Entirely. The pain….oh sweet goddess have mercy….
I snapped back to the present. Twitch rubbed his forehooves, as I shook myself out of my daze. The Acolyte was a blue pegasus, two thunderbolts on her flank. I paid it scarcely any attention as I donned the swaddling garments. The sea of black surrounded me. This was also part of the plan, but what wasn’t part of the plan was the fact that the garment barely fit. I struggled and sweated with the silky black fabric, snarling as it tightly gripped my back. The robes were designed for either Pegasi or unicorns, and thus had a little hole for my horn at the top. As I telekinetically slipped the robe over my horn, Twitch rummaged around in the Acolyte’s saddlebags. He wordlessly pulled out various trinkets and such, replacing them and silently sipping them over my robes. I now looked like a white-horned Acolyte. I looked at the wand. The vile, disgusting instrument made me quake with rage. I wanted to snap it in half, right then and there, and I magically flexed it slightly to prove my point. The more logical side of my brain told me that I may need it later, unfortunately. I had seen the Acolytes use these wands in a similar fashion to keys. Frustrated, I tucked the macabre object back into my robes.
There was a tiny slit for my eyes- the hoods and face-covering cloth made it look as though it should be impossible to see. I was rather delighted to be proven wrong. I started to walk in the robes, and it was surprisingly easy; I had been expecting to be slipping and tripping all over the place. I bent my knees and hopped on the spot a few times, to get used to the sensation. The black robes were already starting to swelter in spite of the zero room’s lack of a pointed light source. The mass of black fabric trapped the glow from the cube’s interior walls. I panted a little, and I felt Twitch rummage around in my saddlebags. He pulled out two small talismans- an icy blue one and a black one with a clear centre.
I pulled them towards me and hung them both around my neck. Talismans act like portable spell jars; they allow a non-unicorn or a unicorn who doesn’t know the correct spell that they need to carry a portable version on their person. Besides, some spells required constant input of magic to maintain, and this could grow very tiring for the user; talismans allowed you to avoid all that hassle. My view, which had been constrained by the slits in the fabric mask, opened up suddenly to allow me to see as though the fabric wasn’t there. I could still feel the mask on my face, and turning around swiftly I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that in spite of the talisman, I could still see the fabric of the robes. I hung the second talisman around my neck- it was a cooling talisman, and dealt rather nicely with the issue of me overheating.
I looked Twitch up and down. I realized that no matter what we were not going to be able to pass Twitch off as a prisoner being transported.
“We should probably get you one too, huh?” I said. Twitch nodded.
~~~~~
The two of us trotted down the hallway. I had found a map in the pack of the second Acolyte, and we’d also clobbered a few guards too. The oh-so brilliant plan was to ditch these robes as soon as we were out, and change into the guard armour. That was going to be easier said than done with Twitch, who stood out like a sore thumb. We also were currently clanking and rattling like a gaggle of gold-plated geese. As we trotted down the hall, I whispered to Twitch, “whatever happens, let me do all the talking”. He nodded. An Acolyte- an actual Acolyte- trotted down the hall. He stopped and looked at us. The cowled head cocked slightly. He heard us rattling and seemed to be about to speak.
“Official business. Keep moving.”
The Acolyte hung his head. I was fairly sure if I could see his face it would be pouting. He trotted off and I resisted the urge to discreetly brohoof Twitch.
According to the complex map, there was a small room off to the side down our current corridor that lead to a small room titled “Records room.” I was rather curious to find out exactly what in the hell was gong on here. And more importantly, what was up with Twitch? He sure as hell wasn’t an Acolyte, that much was clear. But yet he wasn’t a member of the rank-and-file, that much was also clear. He was….different. I’m – I’m not saying that was bad or anything, but it sure as hell made things very very confusing. The door to the records room said, Acolytes only. No guards permitted. Seeing as how we certainly looked the part, I quickly decided that that meant us too. I telekinetically opened the door. A lone junior Acolyte was sitting at a desk, up to his horn in paperwork. I loudly cleared my throat.
“Hey. 'Scuse me. Can I please have every file we have on Tw- the red pegasus currently being held here?” The Acolyte looked surprised. As he complacently fished through paperwork, he remarked,
“You must be new here! That’s subject X. It’s supposedly a very important pony.”
It. Like Twitch was a piece of equipment. He stiffened at that, but said nothing and didn’t move.
The Acolyte handed me a large pile of papers. “Here you go. Amazing you got promoted immediately. I’m still in the training phase- you must really be something special!” I resisted the urge to burst out into a loud I TOLD YOU SO directed at nopony in particular, but instead I simply took the papers and left with only a passing nod. I left the room, and was surprised to see Twitch was not following me. I saw him stop outside the door, the black mass quivering a bit. He took in a deep breath, and let it out. To my extreme horror, Twitch re-opened the door and politely asked for paper, in his weird high-and-low voice. The Acolyte commented on it. Without missing a beat, Twitch simply said, “Sick.”
And then he left. He finally seemed to relax a little. Our saddlebags now bulged with all manner of things, and Twitch and I were making good time towards what the map said was the prison’s sole door to the outside. We walked in silence for awhile, trotting quietly. Seeing nopony else in the hallway, I whispered to Twitch, “Why did you get that paper? It’ll only slow us down.”
Twitch shuddered a bit, before choking out, “gift. Scribe…. special.” I was at a loss for what to say. Twitch seemed to know what he was doing though, so we trotted down the hallway in unison. It was very long, and the uniform grey colour of everywhere else. Lined down the hall, spaced at even intervals were lots of doors. I mused a bit about what might be behind them before snapping back to the present. At the end of the hall there was a faint red glow from a large sign reading EXIT.
We trotted down the neverending hallway some more. My nerves were stretched tighter than steel wire by that point. I hadn’t really considered, but if an Acolyte caught sight of either of us screwing up anything, they’d probably stick our hooves into the cooker and zap until there was nothing left. I shivered a bit. Twitch saw my frightened quivering, and by way of an answer made a soft hiss, like a tiny piston. I straightened up sharply. I had to admit, for a guy who could barely talk, Twitch easily grasped the gravity of the situation. I wasn’t planning on telling Twitch any of this of course- under the circumstances he was being awfully brave. The guy had every reason to be scared out of his (admittedly crazy) mind right now, and if I started letting on that I was scared too, it could prove to be very catching. They say the morale of the general affects the morale of his troops. Not that I was a general. Nor was Twitch a soldier.
I approached the door, internal musings interrupted to make way for more immediate concerns in reality. It had a large, glaring red sticker attached indicating that this was an emergency door to only be used in case of fire. I briefly glanced at the sticker- someone had scrawled Thnx T! on it in black marker. Ignoring the graffiti, I turned to Twitch and nodded, grinning beneath my mask. In my haste to escape, however, I neglected to check that the door was not wired in.
I placed both hooves on the pushbar and gave it a shove. The door swung open. Outside was exactly as I remembered it- a blasted and withered landscape. There was a skeleton of a dead tree in the distance, and above it all was an omnipresent layer of clouds. The ground was flat and grayish brown, and twigs and stones jutted up from the monotony of the hellish waste periodically.
And then all hell broke loose.
A piercing alarm blared throughout the prisonblock, piecing wail of the siren stinging our ears. I spun around and panicked as Acolytes and guards alike came pouring out of siderooms and tunnels, all screaming and clamoring at us to halt. They charged right towards us, an oncoming mass of anger, armour, and black fabric.
Twitch lifted his hood so I could see his face. He looked me right in the eyes.
“Dumbass.”
~~~
End chapter one.
