Insanity of the Labs Prologue
By: A Random Guy
This Story has been interpreted into written form The Book of Era* with permission from the current Arlibyr.
*Which is a fictional book in a fictional universe created by a fictional being
Universe: MP3NO-U070345
Location: Canterlot, Equestria, Earth, Sol
Local Time: 8:24 AM, 11 months before the historically recognized Age of the Sun
Celestia’s sun was beginning its daily journey across the sky. The streets of Canterlot were populated by small clusters of ponies running through their daily errands. The young city was becoming busier by the day ever since its establishment two years ago, each day showing a little more pride of being the new capital of the country. The air was filled with the excitement of rising business and sparkling new buildings. This was the time of the rise of Equestria!
Rumors also had their fair share of growth. One series of such rumors surrounded a chrome building that was seemingly forged out of thin air in the middle of the night. One rumor suggested the plot of land the metallic structure stood on was recently bought by some national hero. One rumor stated that the Princesses gave him the land for his honorable deeds. One rumor implied that the word “Science” on the sign at the front of the building was forbidden sect of zebra magic so horrid that not even the bards were allowed to talk of them in their stories and songs. Of course, many knew the pony who tried to start this rumor had too many screws loose up in his noggin.
A passing violet unicorn with a cerulean mane and a quintuplet of stars for a cutie mark laughed when she heard these rumors about her workplace the first time. Now after the few weeks from when they started, they were becoming the bane of her existence. Starry Gale hated it when one of her friends asked about what crazy zebra or giraffe magic she was preforming inside the building. It didn’t help that some of the passing rumors were about her eating a griffon talon so she could grow wings, or of her sawing off a limb so she could make a one-time use potion to regrow her limbs. It also didn’t help that her only two co-workers showed signs of lunacy in some form or another, and that included her boss.
A bell chimed as she entered her office from the street, or rather, every employee’s office. It was a rather small room, with two small desks on one side and a large desk with a blank chalkboard on the other, and a door leading to a larger room for indoor experimentation. She sat down one of the smaller desks next to another unicorn with a blazing yellow coat, pitch-black mane, and a ball of flame for a cutie-mark. Charred Mane, as he’s called, was finishing his paper about the effects of casting spells while standing in the middle of a camp fire. As she recalled from the conversation with the poor unfortunate volunteer after the experiment, the results were “Not recommended”.
She was starting to tackle her own pile of paper work of lawsuits and court orders, almost all of which Charred Mane accumulated, when the working pair’s boss walked into the office from the back room. The walking Earth pony had a few characteristics floating around him that helped start the odd rumors traveling around town. For one thing, his name was Dranorth, which sounded like a name that didn’t even originate in this universe, let alone Equestria! Another one of his odd defining features was that he was entirely pitch-black, save for his cyan eyes and highlights on his mane. The light around him looked like it died, shriveled up, and blew away like dust in the wind. He looked like the Equestrian version of the inside of a black hole.
Dranorth gave a routine, “Good morning,” as he sat in his large desk that took up a third of the room. Other than that, a regular hush filled the room, save for the rustling of paper on a desk and the quick scribbling of a pen. This was the sound that fills every one of Starry Gale’s work days when she wasn’t assisting in some crazy experiment. There were, however, a few conversations of various strange topics that occur every now and then. “Finished!” cried Charred Mane, creating the start of another one of said topics. “The results are done!” He picked up his stack of papers with a glow of yellow magic and slammed it on the desk with a feeling of conquest. His boss gave a quick glance before looking back to whatever he was doing. “Well, good for you,” replied Dranorth with slight sarcasm. “Didn’t you tell me yesterday that you were drawing out the design for some future expansion for the building?”
“Yep.” A roll of parchment slammed into the black-hole Earth-pony’s forehead in a ball of yellow magic. Indication of annoyance was lacking as black hooves spread the paper projectile across the desk. “Charred, what did you say your last job was?” Charred Mane replied with melodramatic pride. “Only the most critical job of the country: Waste Management! Why’d you ask?”
“Well, just by glancing at these plans for the hallways, I’d say I found the person to blame for the flaming toilet epidemic.” The enthusiasm drained from the yellow unicorn as Dranorth went on. “Just the sheer number of fire traps would be a health hazard, ignoring the fact that these are probably the deadliest I’ve ever seen. We would have to completely rewrite the company insurance policy to exclude every fire-related injury unimaginable! If I didn’t know better, I’d say you would be a certain childhood friend of mine disguised in your current appearance.”
Charred Mane wore a befuddled face as he tried to decipher what his boss was saying. “So… You like it or you hate it?” “Let me put it this way,” Dranorth said with smooth emphasis. “If you die a horrible death due to a work related accident, I’ll guarantee that these plans will be implemented as your memorial if none of your family members sue. Until then, dream on. Now, weren’t you desperate last week to try another experiment while that pony was running around aflame? It involved time travel, right?” The pyromaniac colt answered with a blank face lost in a field of memory as he tried to remember what idea had him so excited that it made him ignore the disaster of his last experiment.
The black-hole of an earth pony lost interest in waiting for an answer. “Whatever it was, I’m sure it will come back to you later this week.” The moment was soon forgotten as the front door violently opened with a huge bang as an olive unicorn mare with a dark green mane rushed to Star Sparkle’s desk and place a bundle of white cloth on her desk with surprising grace. A tangled mess of words rocketed from the crazed mare’s mouth and slammed into Sparkler’s face. “Sorry, can’t explain! Or baby sit! Husband had an accident! Can’t stay! Got to hurry! Need to run!” And with a quick burst of speed, she was gone, leaving behind the bundle of cloth and three dumbfounded faces.
Charred Mane was the first to talk. “Do you think your babysitter’s scatterbrained husband tried to slay a rampaging dragon again?” Starry Gale rolled her eyes in annoyance. “You know as well as I do that Starswirl is forbidden to be within a mile of any dragon, even if they are rampaging. I think he tried to summon Orange Crabs again. His house had a citric smell to it when I dropped my kid off this morning.” To add to her list of morning frustrations, the bundle on her desk started to cry. “Speak of the devil.”
Starry Gale unfolded the blanket to uncover a blue foal with a light blue mane. The foal’s wailing had a profound effect on Charred Mane, who was covering his ears with his hooves. By contrast Dranorth seemed to not even acknowledge the bawling child. The only evidence showing that he was aware of the events occurring was his simple statement. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
It clicked in Starry Gale’s mind what he was implying. “Diapers! Dranorth, I need to run to the market really!” Dranorth responded with a wave of his hoof towards the door. “Take your time.” Minimum of said time was spent as Sparkler jumped from her desk and ran out of the door, leaving behind her howling offspring. “She’s as scatterbrained as Starswirl,” mumbled Charred Mane. Unfortunately, the shards of his sanity were being pushed to the brink by the foal’s roaring crying.
Dranorth perked up as if he heard a distant explosion. “We’re going to need a mop.” He declared as he made his way from his desk to the back room, leaving Charred Mane to sit in his crumbling sanity and a crying foal to push his limits.
By the time his common sense was beaten to a pulp, the black-maned unicorn had enough of the cacophony of the foal. “Time to start a time travel experiment.” A golden aurora formed around his horn and his co-worker’s child as he thought of the spell for time travel. When he finished piecing together the spell within his mind, he poured all of his energy into the temporal enchantment. With a few cosmic sounds and a flash that would have blinded the gods, he casted the spell, and not even the desk was left. He was reveling in his success of creating a quiet room when a chime rang throughout the building, telling all that a being was entering through the front door and not making its own entrance in a wall.
“I’m back! I bought the diapers. Can you believe a diaper vendor was just outside the office? You would call me insane if I told you about the line of mothers I had to wait… wait a minute. Where’s my desk?” The recently returned purple mare looked around in confusion when a dreadful thought took root in her mind. “Where’s my baby?” The situation was a perfect brewing pot for turning confusion into greater confusion with a strong sent of worrying. Leave the pot to cook long enough and you get an angry mother.
This fact crossed a certain yellow unicorn’s mind as his common sense came back to him in a flood of panic. On any other occasion, he could maintain a decent poker face long enough to save his rear. However, a certain rare talent Starry Gale possessed that landed her current job right in front of her was her natural ability to summon large, angry demons from no-one-knows-where. Charred Mane knew is fate was sealed when Starry Gale put two and two and two together and transformed into a rampaging mom. Hes wished he was in whatever predicament Starswirl was currently in, because it was guaranteed to be a whole lot better than the one he was he was about to be in.
~~~o0o~~~
When Dranorth walked in from the back room, he told Starry Gale that he didn’t like the new renovations she tried to implement and gave her a mop and broom. She could understand why he didn’t like the newly red-painted floor and walls, the fresh rubble décor, and the relaxing jagged sunroof. And all for free when an ebony demonic cloud escaped its netherworld through the gateway of her rage fit. What she didn’t get was why she had to clean up the remodeling in her current state of mind. That question will puzzle her to the grave, which at this point is in about a year, give or take a week or two.
Local Time: 2:47 PM, 1 week after the start of the historically recognized Age of the Sun and Nightmare Moon’s banishment.
Dranorth was currently looking through five applications of potential employees. These were the only applications since the “resignations” of his two former workers. He had gotten to the point where all he was trying to do was find a combination of applicants that wouldn’t create another near apocalyptic event or resign right after payday. To top off his recent problems with his lack of workers, he was in over a thousand years of debt from what the country was asking him for compensation from turning the night princess into a malevolent harbinger of darkness. Everyone wants to blame the big guy, he thought.
The black Earth pony’s train of thought was interrupted when the building filled with the chime of the front door as a familiar purple unicorn mare entered. Dranorth asked a daunting question that was biting him once she entered. “Why did you come back? You have Equestria asking for my paycheck for the next millennium and everypony within 50 miles of the border is looking for you.”
Star Sparkle hesitated in what she had to tell him. “Well, my husband and I have been on the run for a while. We did some stuff that makes me regret having a bounty over my head… Well, I might be having another child…” She received a reply that tripped her slightly. “I know you are. What I’m asking is why you came here?”
Was I bulging already? she thought as she took a glance behind. Nope, still skinny… ish. The unicorn mother was starting to question how her ex-boss knew that she was bringing another kid into the world, and if he really was a pony at all. “I need to save my future child.” She had no clue what she was doing, but she became so desperate that this somehow became a logical answer. “Life as a fugitive is not how a child is supposed to be raised. I was wondering if you could help me.”
Dranorth gave a displeased sigh. He knew he was crazy for doing this. “I have a method for what you want right now, but it’s going to alert every unicorn in the city of your presence, which I personally think you deserve. Oh, don’t give me that look. Because of the demon you unleashed, this would be the fifth time an entire nation is accusing me of turning the god of a giant space-rock into a monster. I’ve only done that twice. But since I couldn’t care less about my reputation, I’m willing to help.”
Starry Gale interrupted with a squeak of delight before the black-hole pony continued. “Before you get all excited, let me tell you what I’ll do. I can teleport the fetus to another mother in the distant future. The child can grow up in a different time and a chance life. But you would never see the mother, or your child. Never. Ever. At all. In. Your. Life. Still want to do this?”
An exaggerated nod from Starry Gale suggested she was determined to stand her ground from the beginning. “When do we start?”
~~~o0o~~~
The ebony “Earth pony” sat alone in the building again, contemplating of the events surrounding him. He was using his own abilities to view the world around him without needing a set of physical eyes to see. Starry Gale was currently panting behind a dumpster several miles away, hiding from the searching unicorns’ magic. He used his mind to manipulate their magic away from the hiding mare, though he didn’t control anything else beyond that. His ex-employee was surviving on her own, but not for long.
A thick black smoke surrounded the stack of resumes on his desk and organized them in a row. None within this universe knew what he was truly capable of, or where he came from. At least, no one who was supposed to be in this universe knew. His dark past was his to keep in a cliché form. Now the only thing he needed to change was his coat color. Absolute black tends to scare off potential clients. Maybe a nice blue hue will suit him fine. No red. Wait, green! Orange? Burgundy?
