The former unicorn (who was currently a unicorn stallion) looked at the tied pegasus mare. She was crying, but that was because of pain. Emotional tears, he hoped to create later. This was a pegasus, after all. Enclave. Her kind hated the ground and sought every opportunity to destroy it.
In exchange for their insolence, he would destroy them.
He had finished his work on the interstitial spell matrix; a veritable pipbuck but it existed outside the universe, and made him unkillable. After a fashion. With a training ball hanging around his neck formed of a pain spell and forged of the pegasus mare's soul (or at least a very tiny fragment) he could begin making her into a salable pet.
The former unicorn considered the previous pets he had made to be inadequate at insulting the pride of the Enclave. He had cut off two scouts' wings and given them a copy of the guide to the wasteland to share. There were laws, he'd learned, up there. Don't engage with the self proclaimed leader of the kingdom of Joe. But their army snuck in and branded the wingless scouts as dashites, crushing their soul more thoroughly than his current form ever could. In return, he would crush this mare. It was all he could do.
The former unicorn lifted the white, glowing ball. It looked much like a memory orb. “Do you know what this is, my pet?”
Panting, the mare answered but did not look up. “I assume that's how memory orbs are made. Now you're going to steal my body and infiltrate some base, or something.” She strained against the ropes to try and sit upright, the metal band around her wings breaking pinion feathers vital to working flight.
He let it fall against his chest. Brown, today. He was either a deep orange, or brown unicorn and probably had lime green mane and tail but the former owner had never washed it, so honestly he couldn't tell. “No, my pet. Memory orbs don't hurt. This does.” He laid the sole of his right hoof to the orb, thinking of the number five, and pictured energy arcing across that number, the switch having been thrown to the closed position, shorting out the circuit.
The mare screamed, her head slammed against the wooden planks that formed the floor, her legs convulsed into hard, straight rods, unmoving even as she reached the end of her breath. the pony, once a pre-war wizard, held the image in his mind and watched as she strained, mouth agape, to scream without inhaling. After a brief moment he released both the image, and the training ball.
Gasping for breath, the mare's eyes were blank, now. Trying to recover from what she had just experienced.
Shifting to his left forehoof now, he asked her “Do you love making your owner happy?”
The unicorn of olde saw her pale blue eyes shift rapidly around the makeshift shed as she mumbled “I don't remember being sold into slaAAAAAAAAAA”
She could breathe, but found she could only scream with that breath. It didn't last as long as the previous moment before the former unicorn dropped the number four from his mind. “Not slave. Pet. You're not a pony now, you're a pet. Mine, at the moment. But when I sell you, your owner will get this ball too.”
The unicorn who was not always a deep burnt orange, levitated her ropes to untie them, leaving the metal band around her midsection for now. “Would you like to hold it, pet?”
Warily, the pegasus mare (ironically, a deep brown -- the color of mud) sat up, and hesitatingly reached for the lanyard floating in front of her. The former unicorn released the levitation as the mare's fetlock closed around the training ball. The mare took a sharp breath now, and started to back up. She tried dropping the ball, but the defensive part of the spell had been triggered and was not yet resolved. Several steps later her rump hit the wall, and she could back no farther. Almost hyperventilating she said “Okay you win make it stop. Please I'm sorry for visiting your stupid mud plane just” Here she tucked her nose against her chest and wept, still breathing quickly.
“Would you like me to take your ball, pet?” She grunted assent. He waited a breath, for her to say 'please' or perhaps form a coherent offer to take control of her soul, laying just there, on the floor between them. But she was not used to these new rules under which she now operated. She still thought she was a pony. The stallion scooped up the training ball, and immediately the spell ended with a suddenness that made the Enclave mare's nose snap up, looking first at her training ball, then to the pony that held it.
“What was that?” she asked. “When you picked up my slave orb it told me you had it.”
The once-unicorn shook his head. “Training ball, pet. Not a slave, that's for strong ponies. Not an orb, those don't hurt.” He tipped his head, and tried to make eye contact. But she had been briefed on some of how his interstitial pipbuck worked, and she looked down, trying to not see his eyes. “Say it. Call it a training ball, pet. It's made from a piece of your soul, you know. It will always belong to you.
She tried to inhale despite the metal band. “Training ball.” Weeping again, she looked up, a little bit. Just high enough to see her future, hanging by that lanyard. “Can you tell me up front what the rules are about being your pet?”
The pre-war unicorn wished he could feel satisfaction at those tears streaming down her delicate, refined face. But it was the face of a pegasus; of the Enclave. And all he could feel was anger, knowing her people would never defend her. Not now, after that she had been touched by the ground.
Levitating the ball back over his head, he explained what it could do. “There are five levels of pain, of course. That first one was five and you'll pass out from forgetting to breathe. Four you've also experienced. Make a genuine effort to accept your training and you'll never feel those two again. I think two and three both hurt like the dickens but if my few experiments are to be believed, I don't really use them. Level zero hardly does anything.” Physical contact wasn't actually needed. Thinking of the number zero, and a closed circuit, he deliberately aimed this image at the training ball around his neck. His mind was filled magically with a compass, whose needle pointed to this mare, always. There was a number fed to his mind. It was unitless, but he knew how far away she was, too. She could never escape her master.
“That's zero, you're feeling. A little apprehensive?” She nodded, and forgetting herself she looked him in the eyes. He didn't trigger his own pipbuck's magic; it wasn't needed for this. Letting go of the closed circuit, he said aloud “Zero tells your owner where exactly you are. You'll usually know when he's asking that question. Or her, I suppose but you're kinda young, and all pegasi are flexible, so I expect you'll be sold for.” The stallion tipped his face quizzically. “Well, you know. Entertainment. For the bucks.”
Her breath caught in her throat. Gasping for air she tried to ask something, but it took several tries. “Does your training -- "
He corrected her. “Your ball. Own it, pet. The training ball belongs to you.”
Back to hyperventilating, then deepening to a panting, she managed the correct words. “Does my training ball have a protection against suicide?”
In all honesty, the former unicorn was not a good trainer. He should have, indeed, managed some sort of trigger for at least the overt attempts. But all he was good at, was being incensed at the damage the third tribe of pony had wrought on the first two. “Not directly, pet. But if I catch you, I'll make sure you fail, and then I can proceed to punish you properly. Let me demonstrate level one.”
Horn aglow, a small table levitated out, and then a muffin. They now sat in the center of the space between them. The unicorn wearing a stolen horn watched for the mare's reaction.
The pet mare looked confusedly between the muffin, and her owner. “Do you want me to take the muffin? Are we playing that I'm trying to poison myself?”
The stallion shook his head. “No poison, just my breakfast. I want to make a point of never lying to you during your training process, either.”
The mare looked back, and forth, several more times. “So you're not going to make it a huge infraction, because you never told me not to take it. But you're not going to pretend it's no infraction by saying to take the muffin. So the game is I'm just supposed to reach for it...”
She reached out with a hoof. The once unicorn's mind formed the number one. this was aimed, along with a thought of “Yes, now.” at the training ball. The pet yelled, and jumped awkwardly, knocking over the table and in her effort to right herself, almost stepped on the muffin. Seeing the clear infraction about to take place, she deftly grabbed it in her mouth, still groaning in pain.
Realizing she was holding her owner's muffin in her mouth, she tried awkwardly to right the table, but in as much pain as she was in could only manage to knock it around a few times. the former unicorn raised a hoof, and dropped the mental image from his mind. His pet stopped to look at him. A long second later, and she sat back down, and held his muffin in her fetlocks.
“Would you please put my muffin down.”
The pet, formerly of the Enclave, strove to right the small one legged table with her free fetlock, then carefully set the slightly damaged muffin back into the center of the table. Looking her owner in the eyes again, she asked “Is there a limit on distance? Any kind of limit?” She tapped the metal band, still cutting into her sides and damaging her wings.
The self proclaimed leader of the kingdom of Joe shook his head. “No limit to how far the effects of your training ball can reach, and currently no spells on you to punish you for traveling away from it.” Looking around him, and wincing at the clouds he could see through the tin roof's holes, he levitated a slave collar, and its trigger from the same nearby stall where the table had been. “I would like to perform an experiment with this training ball. But first, pet, do you know what happens to ponies who are successful in killing me?"
The mare slumped down onto her belly, eyes cast down. She mumbled “I've seen the videos. I don't know what I was seeing, but each time an attacker was killed, that soldier turned to attack his squadmates until she was dead. Until only one pony remained.”
The stallion nodded as he hoisted the explosives laden slave collar around his neck. It wasn't clipped shut; he couldn't pick locks very well; less so when he was wearing them. Taking several strides forward he poked the pet in the shoulders with the collar's trigger. When she sat up, they were almost nose to nose. “What you saw, was a full transfer. In the space of time between when you cause mortal injury, and before my body fails me, we trade places and you die of your own injuries. I start out with whatever my killer had.” A cold smile crept across the stallion's face. “Really tends to be a bummer when some ancient mare snipes me from half a mile distant. But at least her sniper rifle sells well. Hold this.” He handed his pet the trigger.
Then, he removed the training ball from around his neck, and smirked as the mare recoiled from its approach. But it was laid carefully on the ground between them.
The mare began speaking. “You're saying pushing this, now, would be”
The stallion finished the sentence. “Suicide. Wait.” The unicorn moved his head to the side, and stared dumbfounded at the metal band around the mare's wings. The he brought his right forehoof to his forehead, and pressed against his horn. A terrified look on the unicorn's face, he looked at the mare, inches away.
“Would you like to take hold of your training ball, pet?” The pegasus mare said flatly. After a moment of neither pony moving or speaking, the mare reached out with her free hoof, and laid her sole against its surface.
The unicorn winced, then started to recoil, mouth now agape, and gasped, and was beginning to vocalize a scream when he stopped, and instead just panted heavily. A broad smile spread across the pegasus mare's face. The unicorn stallion spoke aloud, now. “Alright. Wasn't expecting that. I just thought you were going to rape me or something.” His head tipped to the side, his eyes going to the trigger in the mare's hoof, and down his training ball that lay between them. Raising his eyes quickly, he said “I guess we can still do that if you want.” His expression fell flat. “No thank you.”
The mare squinted her eyes, baring her teeth, and hissed “Then screw you, you stupid” But as she would have finished her epithet, her hoof slipped to press the button. There was a loud 'fwump' as the collar flew off, and blood from the stallion washed down. Watching his lifeblood empty rapidly, the mare raised an eyebrow, and calmly said “Huh. Never even got your name, pet.”
The training ball melted, and then evaporated, not having a big enough sliver of the original soul to stay in this world after the rest of the soul it was forged from left this plane of existence. The unicorn stallion slumped down, and convulsed several times as blood pressure equalized with the surrounding atmosphere.
The mare, her coat a wet red where it wasn't a dingy brown, stood, and stretched, and examined herself. After a moment, the former unicorn said “Not a fan of such plain colors, honestly.” Striding now to where she knew the band removing tool would be found, the former unicorn commented “That can be fixed, though. Eventually.”
