Madness of Anonymous

Chapter: 10

You had, once again, found yourself at the end of another week of locking yourself inside your basement. You had focused on your suit with the upmost attention, using this concentration to finally complete the mechanisms of the suit. Even though you had finished and tested the suit's functions almost an hour ago, you still find yourself smiling t your incredibly pale reflection watching you from the other side of the mirror. Your freshly washed black hair clings to your scalp wetly, messily hanging down your significantly pale forehead. Your skin is almost a marble-white, the slightest tinge of health still residing halting your skin from becoming like that of Dracula. The areas beneath your eyes is a stark contrast to the paleness surrounding it, the deep black (almost purple) tint to your skin displaying even more nights of sleep deprivation. Despite sleeping less and less, some unnatural force within you removes any impulse to rest. Your freshly clean-shaven face retains the familiar facial structure you've had your whole life.

You notice, before pulling on your black shirt, your altered torso. Though once only thin, it seems more lithe with its more pronounced muscle caused by the daily use of metalwork to produce your suit. Your chest, however, is soon concealed by your shirt which you begin to button-up. Though you leave the topmost three buttons undone, because its more comfortable and you're just edgy like that. You inwardly smile at your weak joke, your pearly white teeth appearing behind your pale lips. Examining your face, you freeze somewhat before craning your neck forwards and using a finger to pull one of your eyes bottom eyelids downwards. Observing your reflection closely, you notice the whites of your eyes seem... darker somehow. More foreboding. You relent and decide that it's probably just the lighting, nothing to worry about.

Hearing a loud tapping, you turn your head to the right through the bathroom's open door. Hearing distant, more squeaky than usual, your turn back to the mirror and brush your shirt off and smooth out any wrinkles in your grey formal trousers. Coughing into your hand, you stride towards the front door, passing through each room effortlessly. Grasping the bronze doorknob, you twist it before pulling the whole door open. Glancing outside, you spot a pair of foals walking away from your house, laughing to once another. You're familiar with the pair, the pink filly wearing a tiara and her companion, when you overheard Applejack's little sister talking about them to her friends. You hand compresses tightly around the doorknob as you crane your head around the door to check the other side. The edges of your vision reclaim the familiar darkness as your eyes, unbeknownst to you, slowly become a glossy black with a single white dot being the replacement of a pupil.

This, though not the slightest bit offensive, angered you to no end. They had literally written as many crudely written (and misspelt) childish insults as possible and tucked the paper into a jutting out piece of your door. Slamming your door shut after snatching up the paper, you begin to pace in your living room whilst heavily breathing to relive you of your sudden burst of anger. Seating yourself, you close your eyes and control your breathing until, once you reopen your eyelids, your eyes had returned to their original appearance. With your unsettling eyes gone, so was your anger. Standing up, you grab a bag of bits laying around and head outside into the day's sun.

Striding towards the market, gaining many more concerned yet anxious looks with even some mothers shying their foals away from you. Disregarding them, you merrily wander down the quint streets of the town with ponies turning towards you frequently. Finally reaching the marketplace, you scan the products of each stall looking for the PERFECT ingredients for the suit's finishing touches. You purchase most of the necessary components from the stall you bought the books and scrap mechanisms from, but you also purchase from multiple sellers throughout the market. Whilst in the market, you overhear the fillies from earlier talking excitedly about some "sleep-over" they'll be having tonight. You try and avoid their detection, not wanting to cause a scene in front of everyone. With all the necessary items outlined in one of the books you bought a while ago from the mechanic pony, you rapidly sprint towards your house on the outskirts.

You practically kick your door inwards in excitement, restraining yourself enough to lock the doors on your way to your workstation. Descending into the dimly lit basement, you begin painstakingly setting up moulds made of sand with bowls containing a plastic-like mixture scattered around. With the plastic mix complete, you pour each and every bowl's worth into the moulds and seal them for opening tomorrow morning. Satisfied that your work is almost complete, you mind wanders back to the two fillies who angered you so much with their idiotic insulting of your person. Your mind develops a twisted yet potentially satisfying plan, your eyes slowly turning to the slumped metallic figure in the corner of the room. Looking at the clock hung on the wall, you notice the time is around seven o' clock. With a demented grin, you stride towards the figure.

You slip the leg pieces of the suit on with relative ease, the straps and buckles securing the metal to our legs. You examine your lower body with a gleeful smile, admiring how the sheer quantity of wiring, pipes and metal completely obscures your organic legs yet the suit remains lighter than a feather. You reach over and attach the boots to the legs with an audible 'click' as the mechanisms magically connect and fuse together. You move your foot, ensuring you have full movement. Buckling on the chest piece, you use a free hand to seal the artificial rib-cage shut whilst using you other hand to remain around your neck so you can seal the torso just enough so that you don't get choked by the metal seals. Like the legs and boots, the quantity of components obscures your true form beneath wires and metal. You quickly slip on the arms and clawed hands, testing all forms of movement to present the full articulation of the suit. Satisfied, you move on to the head and seal the bottom half of the head on to conceal your lower-jaw area.

Looking at the first two batches of plastic you set up, you decide that having so little to solidify should mean the plastic shouldn't take more than a couple minutes so you open the moulds and set the now cooled pieces on the top of your workbench. A set of cone-shape teeth and two seemingly blank eyes lay strewn on the wooden surface. Taking a screwdriver, you attach an even amount of the cone-like white teeth to the lower-jaw sealed onto your own. You then take the topmost half of the mask and place it on the workbench, using your screwdriver to fix the rest of the teeth into the appropriate areas. Then, you take the "eyes" (which are two simply because you  moulded a Ping-Pong ball of plastic and will split it in half to create two eyes). Using a saw, you cut the Ping-Pong ball-like plastic in two and attach them to the telescope-like protrusions jutting out of the front of the mask. The telescope-like mechanisms have a magical crystal on the tips, which the plastic covers when the metal and plastic curved halves come together to re-form a Ping-Pong ball. Attaching the final piece of your suit to the lower-jaw section, you test the optics by slowly turning around and taking in your surroundings. The visuals are not distant or too close, almost being like you weren't wearing the helmet at all.

Walking upwards in your skeleton of metal and wire, you look at yourself in your living-room window, examining yourself. The metal totally shields your identity, the circuitry within which hugs your body seems to give you the impression that you're more of a robot than an organic life-form. You flex your clawed fingers experimentally, gently scraping them on the wall and leaving fine indents and scratches. You test your mental link to the suit by willing your tail to move, which it does. It even whips your armchair roughly, and also accidently slapping some items off a table. Your 'face', however, is somewhat disturbing. The snout is just over the length of one and a half T.V remotes, and the optical mechanisms above it seem to jut out slightly. You jump when you turn your eyes only for the fake ones to move seamlessly just like your own, acting like real eyes. They even reflect the colour of your eyes! The throat of the suit is successfully linked to the tank within the chest-piece, your mouth shielded from view when the suit's mouth opens.

Your 'eyes' glance through a crack in your curtains and spot the star-filled sky beyond them. With a giddy laugh, you nearly prance out your backdoor and sprint across the fields of the town's outskirts. The boots you're wearing add an extra spring in your step as your speed is increased by the mechanisms within, your heavy breathing coming out as muffled groans from within the suit. You know exactly where the brats will be, having looked over them as the pink one's father left town for a night. You quickly find yourself inside the hedges bordering Filthy Rich's manor, the cool metal plates blocking the feelings of the outside world. Skittering forwards, you clasp the manor's brick walls and begin to effortlessly scale them upwards. The suit's clawed fingers impale the bricks as you scurry up. You reach a second-story window and peer inwards, spotting the two fillies climbing into a pair of beds with Filthy Rich stood at the door. Once the two had climbed in and said goodnight, Filthy blew out the lantern and closed the door as he left.

Adjusting yourself, you secure the suit in place with a claw jabbed into the wall and slowly scrape the window pane, causing a high-pitched squeak to resound softly through the room. Diamond Tiara sits up hastily, approaching the window in concern. With you hanging beneath the window she doesn't spot you as she opens the window and cranes her head outside it. Forgetting to close the window, she wanders over to Silver Spoon and nudges her awake. They are distracted by their conversation enough so that you sneak into the room unnoticed. They continue to discuss what the sound was, not realising you're right behind them. Silver Spoon dismisses her friend before choking mid-sentence. Asking what was wrong, Diamond Tiara turns her head towards you.

There you stand, the moon behind you and outside the window casting the metallic edges of your suit in a silver glow as darkness seems to flow through the criss-crossing metal plates. Trailing upwards, the fillies watch in sheer horror as you flex your razor sharp claws outwards before craning your neck into Diamond's face and screeching an unholy screech of dark delight straight into the faces as your head uncontrollable spasms, your jaw snapping open and closed sporadically as your false eyes become glossy black with pale white pupils which are even luminescent in the night's darkness.

The fillies, understandably, screamed so loudly that even those at Sweet Apple Acres were awoken by the sound.