Madness of Anonymous

Chapter: 9

Disgruntled that your work was halted, you slowly climb the stairs before deactivating the overhead light and locking the door. Opening up your front door, you're astounded for all the wrong reasons when you see who Twilight brought with her. Rainbow herself was stood barely a metre from you, and gives the impression she wasn't very keen in coming here. Good, because you weren't keen on having her here either. Gently, you attempt to promptly slam the door on your guests. Twilight, as usual, has none of it and quickly grasps the door-handle in her arcane grip which holds the door open.

Disgruntled, you open the door and gesture a hand towards the living room. They both oblige, though Rainbow is far more anxious than her purple companion. You close the door before twisting around the living room's doorframe, causing those inside to jump at your appearance. You open your mouth to speak, but it's cut off when a purple glow seals around your lower jaw and tongue, causing you to stand around the door with a tongue flat against a limp-looking jaw. Your eyes droop in the effort to form an unamused expression, a groan coming from your voice box as you try to form words to voice your displeasure.

"Anon, is it okay if I have a private chat with Rainbow for awhile?" The librarian asks, gesturing to her companion with her head after releasing her hold on your mouth.

You nod, rubbing your free lower-jaw, before returning to the basement. You hastily continue construction in hopes of making as much progress as possible before you're needed. Travelling upwards, the legs now complete, you reach the torso of the suit. With your new found knowledge on technomancy (though rather basic), you build the padded layer what will have contact with you with a regular metal plate on the side opposite to that which will touch you. Then, on this metal plate, you attach some hastily made wiring and thin pipes to the metal plate running from the bottom all the way to the top, the bottom most wiring connecting to the extra wiring around the belt-area of the leg pieces. Thus allowing the legs to be connected to the new abdominal panels you just started constructing.

You've built the panels to be more loose fitting and in segmented rings. With a more panelling being on the back of the abdominal suit area. You even craft a ball-joint on a more jutting out piece of metal you weld on to the bottom of the abdominal area. Attached to this flexible joint is a tadpole-shaped metal pole which tapers at the thicker section into thinner segmented rings of metal. Each ring is connected by rivets with wires and pipes within the hollow core of the metal. When you look at the metal, it looks like a short metallic mouse tail, but that won't appear once the final touches are complete.

Building upwards, you create a "spine" of wires, bolts and metal. The wiring of the suit splits into two, one half being across the entire suit whilst the rest travel along the spine to where the head will go. This will allow the spine to transmit commands downwards whilst the wires not going up the spine will transmit the commands across the desired area of the suit. Thus enabling the instructions by the operator to traverse across the entire suit. Building out from the spine, you weld plates of metal to the shoulder areas for shoulder-pads and some curved metal plates to act as a ribcage. Then you add a net-like surface of metal to cover the ribcage and attach some wires to this surface, the gaps in the surface allowing wires to go inside and beneath the ribcage.

Sighing to yourself, you realize that the crystals (if any) you have in your possession couldn't possible be strong enough to power the mechanised suit. With a huff of exhaustion, you remove your safety gear and slump upstairs, wiping your brow and locking the door behind you. Returning to your living room, you enter before sliding into your chair and resting your head on your hand whilst your elbow is propped onto the armrest. You seem to have interrupted the pair's conversation, and they now watch you with quizzical expressions.

"What?" You ask.

They both look at each other strangely before turning back to you.

"We heard about what happened at the restaurant. Do you want to talk about it?" Twilight asks, her reluctant sidekick remaining awkwardly silent.

"No." You answer harshly.

"But-" She starts.

"No. I've gave you my answer, and I'm sticking with it! Now, do you have any reason to barge into my home like this?!" You yell, gaining both of their un-divided attention. She hangs her purple head, void of any answer. You snort hot air out of your nose in anger.

Leaping upwards into a standing position, looming over the startled faces below, you jab a finger at the air towards the front door.

"Out." You say bluntly.

Reluctantly, they both walk dejectedly through the door. Though Twilight is outside and walking away with rejection, her rainbow-haired companion turns to you as she nears the exit. Her face is blank, probably trying to process something or a thought. A faint, almost inaudible sound echoes silently through you. A quiet thrum, almost like that of a voice, relays through your eyes. It whispers to you, inhuman and deep. Like a far away car's engine, a rumbling drone drawing ever louder. It speaks of thoughts you hadn't even experienced yet felt, of something playing with your thoughts similar to a puppeteer. Your throat goes dry, stomach freezes to ice as it's words seem to break some cloud surrounding you. All the murderous thoughts being nothing but small whispers coming from your own caged conscious, that something has sealed away your true feelings and thoughts to protect HER. Images flash before your eyes, undeniably hallucinations yet still having a deep impact on you. Images of a regal and pristine ruler casting a spell on your comatose form, your would-be murderer exiting a court with her friends all smiling, and finally you locked inside your own personal hell.

A strange machination of the thought of your mind being caged flashes before you. It shows a pitch black room and a pedestal of stone at the centre of the inky darkness. A faint light cast above it, shielding the pedestal from the coming darkness surrounding it. The pedestal having a large cube of ebony atop it. The cage is a hollow cube of the dark material, spinning a foot above the pedestal's top as it hovers unnaturally. Your body shakes as it hears a faint scraping coming from the shadows drowning you, a sound similar to a rusty rake being pulled across a similarly rusty metallic surface. A strange yet monstrous claw seems to sprout from the darkness itself. Constructed of dirty iron and steel, mattered and greasy grey fur dashed with rotten gore, the claw-like construct stretches further and further towards the cube like a serpent before flashing in an arc as it swipes the cube itself. Though not shattering the orbiting object, the cube alters in appearance to show a crack in the ebony surface emanating a blinding red glow from within, a soft mist pouring swiftly from the damaged surface. Just as suddenly as it appeared, the hallucination vanishes, leaving you staring at the floor of your living room blankly.

Wiping your eyes of the dregs of the visions, you look up to the front door and spot an inquisitive looking Rainbow slowly stepping towards you. A clouding darkness begins to draw towards the centre of your vision, beginning from the edges of your sight. Enthralled by some unknown force, your mind blank, you throw yourself through the air towards her. Her body locks up in terror, her mouth choking out a scream as she stumbles back into a wall. You thrust your arms forwards and clench your fingers, locking around her shoulders like a vice, hauling her off the ground. Your mouth snaps open, creating an audible sound 'click' in the process, and emits a melting pot of enraged sounds. Her eyes freeze to pinpricks at the sound, her legs bucking feebly as her body shuts down. Your grip never lessens as you fling her around the room like a rag-doll, her nose bloody and eyes blackened by the end of it. She's barely conscious when you lift her back to eye level and emit the sound again. Against your will. You lift her up over your head and launch her straight through the front door's vacant opening. Her body seems to jolt awake as she sprints and weakly attempts to fly by jumping into the air slightly only to not find the power until the third attempt.

She rockets past her concerned friend, firing off into the evening sky towards her home of clouds. Twilight turns back to your house worried, only to see an empty door and vacant windows. Twilight considers going back to check on you, but remembers that last time she tried anything caused her to run for help immediately after doing so. Her resolve solidified, she begins to walk away and doesn't turn around as she leaves your home behind. Rainbow, on the other hand, is perched atop her home's cloud roof. The sound you roared through her ears still echoing hauntingly. Her body is covered in cuts and bruises, her shoulders a deep purple from the tightness of your grip. Your face when you brought her to eye-level with you is burnt into her mind, welded into her memory like the metallic constructs in the bowels of your home.

Rainbow wasn't cowardly, but brash and proud. She wasn't afraid of any villain her and her friends had faced-down before. She had stared down the avatar of chaos himself with her friends. Oh, she was a very brave individual. But even she was ridden petrified by the visage your face seemingly changed to. She had known you for far longer than the others, which lead to her inevitably dangerous feelings for you. What you never knew was how much it really hurt her to live with the memory of her actions, actions driven by spite and cider collection hidden under her bed. She knew you as a kind soul in the past, and regrets having twisted you mentally. She had been speechless on the train, her mind running a blank as she tried to process how such a once kind-hearted spirit would grow so cold by her own doing. Yeah, you flinging her around your living room like she weighed as much as a pillow, that shook her up and made her brain shutdown trying to fathom the situation. Sure, that spooked her a lot more than she thought it should. She knew she deserved it for what she did, but it didn't make it any less terrifying. But, what really horrified her was what your once gentle face had shifted to. Yes, you looked about as gentle as a starving shark when flinging her around, but that was nothing compared to your face the last time you brought her up to see it.

Noticing the telescope Twilight gave her as a gift a long time ago to try and get her into an intellectual hobby (it didn't work), she slowly moved over to it on limping hooves. Grasping it with one foreleg and rubbing the dust (yes, dust) off the equipment, she walks over to her window and sets up the tripod. Adjusting the telescope by fumbling around with it for a couple minutes, she finally manages to get it working and skims your house with the magnified view. Moving her eye from the magnifier, she skims your home through the window and squints her eyes for anything to inspect. Seeing a strange shape in your front garden, she zooms in on the shape. A very familiar view appears, something she remembers seeing when you lifted her to your eye-level. She stares down the telescope as your face, pale and void of any visible emotion, stares back at her. Eyes blackened and hollow with tiny pristine white pinpricks staring directly into Rainbow's eyes. She stumbles back, screaming in surprise.