Wings and Steel

by Jinzou

Rating: teen
Tags: Tragedy, Dark, Alternate Universe, Human
Length: 2282

After another failed attempt to get their Cutie Marks, the CMC decide to poke around Twilight's lab. Shenanigans ensue.

After an incident in Twilight's lab, Scootaloo finds herself in a completely different world, where nothing is the same. Taken in by a sympathetic captain, and trained to fight, Scootaloo must either face her demons, or be left behind, bleeding out the cruel liquid rubies of misfortune and chance.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2014-04-29 03:39:40 UTC

Prolouge

"Well that was a total bust." Sweetie Belle said dejectedly.

"Yeah, Cutie Mark Crusaders: Kracken Hunters wasn't exactly the best idea we've come up with." Applebloom agreed, pushing her wet mane out of her face. "Maybe it would help if we knew where to look..."

"Well I don't know about you two, but I'm not just lay around like a stick in the mud." Said Scootaloo, shaking herself like a dog. "Hey, I got an idea!"

"What's that?" Asked Applebloom hesitantly.

"Well, the problem is, we're going after things that almost nopony could ever achieve, and with our luck, we'll keep going bigger until we're going to hope to find Atlantis or something. So, why don't we try doing something ponies have done before?"

"I don't know about you Scootaloo, but I don't really want to get a cutie mark in gardening." Sweetie Belle said flatly.

"Well of course not, I mean like viking ponies!"

"I don't particularly want a cutie mark in mass murder either." Said Applebloom.

Scootaloo rolled her eyes.

"Well, something exciting ponies have done in the past."

"You really want to have a history lesson on the weekend?" replied Applebloom.

"You got a better idea?"

"..."

"..."

"Fine."

Scootaloo smirked.

"To Twilight, away!"

********

"Well to start, there were the sacking of the former queen, led up to by a terrifying civil war! Eh, but on the the second hand, that might be a bit too violent for fillies... Oh, what about the siege of Canterlot? Or the founding of Eqestria? We had to trade with Minotaurs and Griffins to get off the ground, but look at Equestria these days! Thanks in no small part to Clover, Commander Hurricane and them, oh  but you were there for the play! That covers the basic idea of the events, but there's so much more that you can learn! What about..."

"I take it back, this was a really bad idea." Whispered Scootaloo to her friends. They nodded in stereo.

"Oh just imagine if we actually go back and see these events for ourselves! I mean, I have a few ideas, but they're only in prototype. A machine that can travel all over space and time!"

"If that existed, we could go back ten minutes and warn ourselves that this was a horrible idea." Applebloom said, glaring at Scootaloo. Scootaloo grinned sheepishly.

"Well, she seems distracted, we can make a break for it."

The three then proceeded to tip-hoof out of Twilight's room, where she had taken them to find the more... detailed books, which Twilight had to quickly reorganize, as they were, and I quote: "Not safe for fillies' eyes."

As they snuck down the staircase, they noticed a curtained entryway on the side of the stairs.

"Hey, wonder what's behind here?" Applebloom wondered.

"Most likely a bathroom, what does it matter?" retorted Scootaloo.

But it was too late. Applebloom had disappeared behind the curtain.

"Here we go again." Sighed Sweetie Belle.

And behind the curtain they went.

**********

"What is it?" Asked Sweetie Belle.

There came no answer. In front of the three fillies sat a large machine, which had a large screen, located between a pair of open double doors. The machine showed various pictures of places they had never seen. There was deep in a forest, a place with a black ground and structures of what seemed to be stone lining the sky, overlooking a grand analog clock with a vast city as a background, on a ship.  The fillies' eyes struggled to drink it all in.

The machine itself was constructed with a thin looking-copper colored metal. There was a large light bulb at the top that blinked off and on every few seconds. There was not much else to see but a large lever sticking out from below the screen. Scootaloo wandered over to and tried moving it, but to no avail.

"Hey, you two, get over here and help me."

Sweetie Belle paused.

"Shouldn't we  figure out what it is first? I mean, it could be dangerous."

Scootaloo rolled her eyes.

"Twilight wouldn't make it so easy to get to if it was."

Sweetie Belle hesitated for a moment, then joined Applebloom and Scootaloo at the lever. Unable to resist the fury of the three midget furballs, the lever moved. There was a bright flash, a strange whirring noise, and the three fillies were catapulted out of the box. Scootaloo felt a blinding pain in her side, which she attributed to landing on it. That's until she looked. The base of her wings was... melting. Melting and dissolving into midair.

Scootaloo screamed. This wasn't just an effect, she could feel her skin being ripped away, tearing into her muscles and skeleton. The base of her wing disintegrated and the wing fell pathetically to the ground. Panic-struck, she tried rolling around, getting away, but whatever it was, it was eating at her legs. She fell to the ground, staring in horror as the same thing happened to her friends. The one sight she would never forget. Applebloom's shoulder was dissolving too, Scootaloo could see inside her chest, into her organs, only to wince as they melted away too, and Applebloom let out a cry of pain. Then another scream got to her.

Laying there was Sweetie Belle, half of her face melted away, a hole where her horn once was.

She watched as the final bit of skin melted off Sweetie Belle's face, and then there was just a grimacing skull staring at her. The skull opened its mouth, but no scream came out. Her hooves, mostly intact, but still being stripped away at, clawed at her empty eye sockets. On her left, Applebloom was lying there, completely limbless, struggling to move.

Scootaloo couldn't scream anymore. And the last thing she knew, the last thing she remembered, was the panicked screams of her friend turned to pained whimpers, as all went black.

Broken

Darkness. That was all there was. My entire existence was darkness. My only thought, darkness. But was it really a thought? Or was it my existence, and I had only just come to realize it? After a few moments of murky reflection, or a few moments as I perceived it. It could well be a few hours, a few days, or even a few moons. Time and reality seemed to blur around me.

Reality. What a strange word. What was reality? To my knowledge, it was the absolute truth, not something we can see too differently. Was it reality that caused my friends to die in front of my eyes? A reality that I brought on, not thinking through something, not pausing to think of the repercussions of my actions? If that was reality, then where am I now? Awaiting the choice to see if I'd be brought up into some pearly gates into the sky or eternal torture? That was, if I even existed.

If a little... What was I?

I was a monster.

I had caused the... the memories blur. What had I caused? What event, that so greatly distressed me, had brought me to this... plane of existence? This implying I was more than an idea. I hardly noticed the movements coming from somewhere below and in front of my conscious thoughts, for lack of a better term. Soon after the movements came noise. Noise. My mind struggled to process this new idea.

The noise. It all my focus went to this noise, trying to dissect it, to learn what it meant. Emotion. Yes, it meant emotion, but what was emotion? And why do I feel the definition goes so much deeper? Emotion, meanings. All these thoughts raced through my head. I wanted to scream, but how could a mere existence scream? Another thought. What was existence? What was screaming?

Existence, that's easy. It's the state of existing, alive or not. An answer out of nowhere, but it only provided more questions. What was alive? And what made something not alive?

Soon my mind was a hive of thoughts and information, true or not.

Sadness.

My focus all snapped to that one... word. Yes, word was the correct term. Those subtle movements, that noise, that only seems to have gotten higher. Not just sadness, C-c...

Crying.

Crying. Tears. Noises. Anguish.

It all rushed back to me in an instant, overloading my thoughts. I wanted to scream. These visual thoughts... no, images... raced through my head. A white thing, water dispelling from it's eyes at a fast rate. Crying. Images of a blurred creature, blue-ish in color. I felt another motion towards this creature, one I couldn't place. White. Blue-ish. Where did these come from?

I let out a quiet, high noise.

Whimper.

No. No stop! Make the voices stop!

It was too much. The darkness inside my mind took me again, and all fell silent.

...

It's an undefined time later when the darkness recedes. It's about this time that I start feeling a new emotion. Cold.

I feel cold not in my mind though. the strange feeling spreads over quite an area. It's very strange.

I decide I dislike this cold, but am unsure how to make it go away. I try thinking the feeling away, but it doesn't. As if taking a cue, thinking on their own, two strange shapes put pressure on a cold area, and pull them closer to my mind.

This scares me. I want to make a noise, but whatever made the noises before doesn't seem to be working.

After what could be a few moments, I hear noises, but not from me this time. They are coming from farther off.

All of a sudden light fills my vision.

Light. Vision. A thousand question spawn, and the darkness takes me again.

Walking on Glass

I opened my eyes.

Noises. Muffled noises.

Muffled.

No. This time I fought off the painful flashes of thought. I ignored the pain, the cold, but couldn't ignore the light. I backed into a solid object, and turned away, to try and block out the painful sensation.

More meaningless noise, and a movement. There was darkness upon the light. The darkness moved across my face, soothing me. The darkness seemed to be pointing something at me, I couldn't make out what it was with my blurry vision and the light assaulting my eyes, but my brain screamed danger. Quiet you, you've already lost my trust.

The darkness moved again, lowering the object it was aiming at me.

I curled up in a ball, trying to shut everything out. There were more muffled noises, and then a... slender shape curled around one of my front legs. My body reacted on it's own and threw itself away from the unwelcome sensation of touch. It backed itself into what felt like a corner, and there I was. Trapped in a space with a mysterious thing. I made myself as small as possible, hoping it would lose interest and leave me. Time seemed to slow down, and nothing moved. But my body had tired itself out, and the cold darkness came again to bury me.

*****

When I next awoke, the first thing I noticed was the feeling of something draped across my back. I reached over my shoulder to find out what, only to be greeted by a strange sensation. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. My eyes scanned the space I was entrapped in, for what, I didn't know.

Light.

Light meant clarity. But how could that be, when it brought so much pain earlier? I struggled to my hooves, only to fall flat on my snout. Eventually I managed to get the light, pushing past a thin wooden slab to get to it. Moonlight flooded my vision. Wonderful, glorious moonlight. I basked in its serene glow for a moment, steadying my frayed nerves. I decided to look around, scope out my surroundings.

That was a horrible mistake.

I was greeted by a tannish... shape. It seemed round-ish in general, but was attached to a stub leading to a even more confusing shape. The circle has various bumps and indents in it. One of the holes in the circle was moving, making confusing sounds. I backed up again, filled with fear of this strange thing. The thing lifted two long, slender shapes, and placed them on my shoulders. No. This felt wrong. What was-

That was when I made the mistake of looking down. I was standing on my hind legs... no... what were those things? They were pale and slender, and reached up to a brownish object just under my line of sight. Oh Celestia, the beast had already infected and morphed me.That's when I caught sight of what had happened to my fore hooves. They were hooves no longer... they had fingers. What had I become?

This triggered another burst of memory. Scenes flickered by faster then I could process. I made out a tree, a mysterious brownish box, and... a face. More specifically, a skull. A skull with bits of flesh being melted away, one that wants to scream, to cry for help, but can't. Something she had brought upon this skull. Had I done that? Had I killed this... my friend?

The word popped up so easily, but what kind of friend was responsible for this kind of thing? The image persisted, the rest of the child's body melting away. I clutched my head, wrapped my hooves around my fetlocks, or whatever it was I had now. The darkness was returning.

The last thing I saw was the being moving towards me.

My last sight, I was sure.

And with that, there was nothing.