Chapters Chapter: 1
Your entire body is completely overwhelmed by the suffocating feeling of agony. The pain is like a thousand burning needles being hammered into your bones, your skin feels like someone is peeling it off with their bare hands. The worst pain emanates from your stomach area, like someone is tugging the flesh. Your mind is a mess of jumbled thoughts as the most recent memories fly past whilst you attempt to string them into a coherent thought. All you remember is a knife shooting towards your abdomen, guided by a light blue hoof, before you sprint out into the streets and collapse. Though your vision is restricted by your eyelids being clenched shut as a reaction to the pain, you can still feel your teeth clench together in anger. Suddenly, you push the pain from your crumbling mind and snap open your eyelids before shooting upwards.
Darkness surrounds you, a single beam of moonlight sifting through the dark to reach your face. The window beckons you over with it's ghost like charm. Sliding off the bed, you feel a slight sting in your stomach area, which you promptly ignore and slowly step towards the window. A coolness crawls up your thin legs, seemingly muffled by the pitch black socks worn on your feet. Your clothing seems to have changed last time you were conscious, with your upper-body completely void of garments. The single thing dominating your torso is the slightly bloody bandages tied around your stomach. Your legs remain clad in long trousers as black as a starless night sky. Shaking your head to clear your thoughts, you approach the window and gaze out through it's panes. You recognise the streets outside as those belonging to the town Ponyville.
A few months ago, you had been misplaced from your own world into this one. Courtesy of the town's studious librarian. It took weeks for her to stop apologising in every conversation you had with her. Ever since that day you had been accidently teleported here, you've been living in this town and only now do you realize how foolish that decision was. Maybe it was the somewhat large group of friends you had made which compelled you to stay. Sighing, your eyes continue to wander across the buildings and dimly lit streets. You can even spot your own home from here, though it's still quite a distance away from your love of isolation. Wait, there is some activity near your abode, why is someone - or, rather, somepony - at your home?
Why don't you take a look?
Spinning around, expecting to see some form of Doctor or Nurse in your company, you find only darkness and shadows. A small droplet of panic-induced sweat falls from your brow and splashes onto the white floor of the room. Your erratic breathing is the only sound occupying the room, slowly soothing away your worries and the heavy breathing of your heart. You exhale deeply before turning around to face the window once more. Instead of staring outside, you look at the ghostly reflection of yourself. Your face is nearly white from paleness, the area around your eyes is dark and bags under your eyes don't help with making your face any more alive-looking. You look like a ghost, what's ironic is that it seems someone wanted to make you into one if your memories and bandaged wound is any evidence. You raise your hand into your vision and see that it's almost skeletal with it's paleness and how thin the fingers and hand are. The nails are still short, just like how they were last time I checked. Your eyes flick back and re-focus on your reflection. Your eyes are still the old deep blue colour they have been all your life, but they seem distant and dead now for some reason. Your hair, a deep black like soot, is messy and unkempt. You remember that you need to check out the activity around your home, so you step away from the window and check around the room for your jacket.
You crack a triumphant smile as you spot your jacket and shirt slung over a nearby chair. In a couple long strides, you reach the chair and grab your shirt first. Brushing your open palm to smooth out the creases, you unbutton the shirt and slip it on before buttoning-up your shirt and hiding the bandages across your stomach. Still smirking, you grab your jacket and slip it on whilst on your way towards the door. Zipping-up the jacket, you grab the door handle and quietly slip through the doorway into the corridor outside the room. Suddenly, you rush back into the room and slam the door shut. Moments later, the door handle begins to snap up and down as whoever is on the other side of the door attempts to gain entry. They fail, however, since you're pushing back against the door to hold it shut.
Your eyes frantically dart around the room before you spot your smart black shoes lying on the floor beside your most recent bed. Turning your gaze to the window, you spot a latch which must mean the window can be opened. Formulating a plan, you hastily spin around whilst still putting weight against the door via your forearm being pressed against the white-painted wooden door. Fumbling with your free arm, you lock the door before stepping back and slipping on your shoes and tying their laces tightly. Hearing a great commotion outside the door, your blood freezes before you swiftly grab a hold on the room's bed and shift it against the door. You then throw as much furniture against the door as possible, the sound of ponies slamming against the door resounds through the room.
You're wise not to trust them. Ponies hurt you, why would they be different?
You ignore the voice and advance towards the window, you grab the latch and open the window as much as possible. Leaping onto the window's panes, you slide outside until all you can see below you is a drop by a couple stories. Your hands grasp the window's frame shakily, before a loud rush of sound breaks you from your stupor. You glance behind you and see a group of pony nurses and a couple doctors enter the room and slowly advance towards you to guide you down from the window. A deep, molten anger flows through your veins and your teeth clench in aggression before you raise my fist and slam it into a glass pane. The window shatters, but you ignore the shocked ponies as you sift through the window's remains and grab a shard of glass.
"Back off!" You shout, your voice spewing forth like boiling bile. As you speak, you quickly press the shard's serrated edge against your pale throat.
The ponies do as instructed, reluctantly. One nurse advances slightly, with her pink mane shifting along her white coat. Enraged at her incompetence, you push the shard more strongly into the whitened flesh of your neck and slowly drag to the right. Slowly, drops start to drip from the small wound and she backs off hastily. Satisfied they are at a suitable enough distance, you launch the bloodied shard at the ground in front of them as a distraction before twisting around and leaping into the night air. Sailing through the cool air, the sound of screams and yells emanating from the room you left, you grin wickedly before rolling across the ground to dispel your momentum. Coming to a stop, you turn back and flash a smirk at the doctors and nurses in the window. You then stand up and sprint down the earthen path into town. Your stomps are like thunder in the night as dust and dry mud trail behind you as your body yearns for home. Late night ponies on the way turn and wave at your before lowering their hooves sadly as you continue on without a second glance, ignoring everypony who greets you. You notice the snobbish "Rarity" slowly trotting across the road, her much smaller sister trailing behind.
You never had a good relationship with this snob, though she always seems to want to change that. Always swaying her hips when she bends down to pick something up, despite the fact she has a damn horn (literally) for levitation. Whenever you would turn to her for clothing, she would always "lose" your measurements before proceeding to grope you "sneakily". Pervert. Due to this, your anger seems to return much stronger as you barrel towards her. She seems to notice you, as she turns and waves with a cheerful smile. A smile which is swiftly wiped off her face as you barge through and knock her to the ground as you continue to run. Behind you, she shouts and yells in that same annoying tone and voice which makes you want to turn back and kick her like a football in the head. But, you have more important issues at hand, so you ignore her shrill voice and continue on towards your isolated abode.
You eventually reach the fields around your house, ironically, this is the home stretch. Still sprinting, you reach your porch and your hand slams into the wooden door which swiftly opens the door. My eyes scan the room until they lock onto another pair of eyes. There, in the centre of your living room, is a pegasus with a light blue coat and rainbow main. The memory of a light blue hoof driving a knife in your stomach comes mind, as your blood boils in your veins. In a fit of pure rage, your hand flies forwards and clenches around the thin neck of the small pony. She releases a squeak as your fingers tighten around the fur-covered flesh. Lifting her from the floor, you turn around and exit the house with her still held tightly in your hand.
"I'm sorry, Anon! I'm sorry!" She screams, no, pleads!
Your dead-looking eyes slowly turn downwards to look at hers. You begin to giggle quietly which soon turns to a full maniacal laughter which echoes through the night and fills the cool air of the town. All ears twitch and turn towards your location with pupils turned to pinpricks. Your own eyes seem even more distant and like that of a soulless husk, as you stare into the magenta eyes of your hand's captive.
"You're sorry, hmmm? I'm not sorry about this!" You roar in her face before slamming her in the stomach with a kick that sends her off the porch.
She turns back to you, whilst holding her stomach in pain, and tears of sadness begin to form in her eyes. But you ignore them and laugh joyfully before slamming your front door closed with the loud bang echoing through the night. You then lock the door and head into your living room. Once you're there you open up the mini-freezer and grab a bottle of Sweet Apple Acres cider, and sipping on the sweet nectar as you chuckle with glee.
Chapter: 2
You're awoken by a variety of sensations, none too pleasant. A beam of sunlight happened to be staring into your eyes, explaining your hands flailing in the air to stop the ray's assault. Slipping from your chair, you land with a "thud" onto the wooden floorboards. Your pale hand rises slowly and begins to rub the ache on your head. Your eyes snap open to witness the sight of your newest pet, Albert, lazily skittering around on the living room's coffee table whilst staring at you with his blank red eyes. All four, though, since he was what this world deems a large spider. Long black limbs sprawled across the table's glass as he approaches you, his eyes always seemed angular and angry even when he's happy. What's strange is that he has no noticeable mouth visible on his grey furry body, which also lacks segmentation known in Earth's spiders. Strange.
Doing a small dance of joy, the furry arachnid leaps from the table and onto your shoulder before latching onto your face with it's spindly limbs and snuggles your cheek with it's grey body. Laughing, you lift the spider off your shoulder gently before setting it down on the ground in front of you. Albert looks at you dejected before you ruffle through the grey fur of his main body which causes a faint squeak to emanate from the spider.
"I'm just going to get cleaned up, I'll be back in a second." You say to the arachnid before rising from the ground and heading upstairs to your bedroom.
Your hand brushes against your bedroom door before you lightly push it open, the dim light from behind you illuminating the room. Stepping towards the bedroom window, you open up the curtains to light up the room before opening the window panes to allow fresh air to enter the room. Sighing, breathing in the fresh morning air, you turn and open up your wardrobe for fresh clothes. Scanning through, you find a fresh suit and pull out all the clothing before setting them onto the bed. Satisfied with your choice, you shut the wardrobe's doors and head back downstairs with your clothing in hand. Continuing on through the living room, you eventually make your way to your downstairs bathroom. Opening the door, you enter the plain white room and head over to the large bath dominating the room with it's large size. Using your free hand, you turn the warm and cold taps on to fill the bath with water. Setting the clothing down on a clothes rack, you go through your regular morning routine by brushing your teeth with the strange tasting hay toothpaste before using the toilet. Once you've completed your routine, the bath is filled with water of a soothing temperature and you're ready to clean yourself up.
You carefully remove your clothing before stuffing the garments into a basket to be cleaned later, you then also peel off the bandages covering your stomach. You admire the faint scaring left behind from the wound, noting how useful healing magic is when used in hospitals. Lifting up a thin yet long leg, you step into the bath before laying down completely to submerge your body but leaving your head out of the water. You scrub your stomach to remove the small patches of dried blood before running some water through your messy black hair. Scooping up some more water, you splash it onto your face to wake you up some more. Slowly opening your eyes as the water drips off your face, your eyes snap open as they spot a yellow and pink form outside the bathroom's window.
The form is question is that of a butter-yellow pegasus with pink hair, her wings flexed upwards in what must only be a sign of arousal. A bright blush dominates the yellow of her cheeks, and you can feel a blush of your own forming, but out of anger. Flinging your hand from beneath the warm water, you flip her off before yelling a string of obscenities at her. Her drooping eyelids snap open as she comes out of her trance, and she lets out an "eeep!" before shooting away. You let your hand leave it's vulgar state, and rub the open palm across your face in frustration. Sighing, you exit the bath before unplugging the drain and drying yourself with a black towel as a knock on your front door reaches our ears. Huffing, you wrap the towel around your waist to cover yourself before exiting the bathroom to answer the knocking. Once you enter the living room, Albert leaps onto your shoulder and hugs your face from atop your shoulder once more. Chuckling, you begin to lazily scratch his grey fur with a pale spindly finger. Reaching the door, you unlock it before pulling the door open. On your porch is the last pegasus you expected to see, Derpy. Her grey coat has her mailbag strapped across it with some letters poking out of it. Her golden eyes looks up to yours (though one is staring into your eyes and the other is looking to the spider on your shoulder). Seeing Albert, she visibly shudders which ruffles the letters inside the mailbag.
"Hey Anon! That's a strange parrot!" She greets happily. Albert visibly recoils onto his back four legs, the front four in the air in a mock bipedal-stance. He places one of his front legs against his chest in an insulted gesture. You turn your head and continue scratching him with a single digit to calm him, which works as he pushes his grey furry body into the digit as it scratches through his grey fur.
"Hello Derpy. Just remember that Albert isn't a parrot, he's a spider." You reply in a monotone voice. "What brings you here?" You ask.
She gives you a nervous look at your lifeless response before ruffling through her mailbag, one eye focusing on your towel and subsequently your groin area as a faint blush appears on her grey furry cheeks. You give a loud, fake cough to snap her out of her daze. Her blush grows in intensity, but only in embarrassment, as she re-focuses on finding what must be a letter for you. Her snout, re-emerging from the bag, has quite a few letters in it's possession. Handing them over to you she waves goodbye before stepping off your porch.
"...I wish you'd put a muffin in my oven... You hear her whisper faintly as she trots away.
"What was that?" You ask her, though you already know what she said. She squeaks, probably due to the anger lacing your tone faintly, before she flies away quickly.
Sighing, you shut the door before setting the letters onto the coffee table. You take one glance at the first letter at the top of the small pile. The name of whoever wrote it reads: "Ponyville General Hospital", causing you to groan as you realise you're screwed before you even open it. I bet they'll send a pony over here telling you how you "Need to stay for a couple days to make sure you're fine" which will probably result in a "Check up" from Nurse Red heart. When you say "Check up", you make air-quotations since these "Check ups" entail Nurse Red Heart groping you for however long she's alone. Great.
You huff in agitation before setting Albert onto his small house. His house was a birdhouse you built out of dark spruce wood with birch wood details to create contrast between the white birch and the darkness of the spruce. The details were a spider web pattern which is present on each side of the cube, the entrance being a large circle so Albert could fit his grey body and black limbs through. Albert didn't have any food or water bowls since, strangely, he never needs to eat or drink and seems to never lose energy though he still sleeps when he wants to.
After setting the arachnid into his home, you continue on to return to your bathroom. The water in the bath had been completely drained out, but your eyes turn from it to the clothes rack to claim your clothing. Pulling on your trousers, you begin to cover your legs in garments such as your boxers, socks and shoes. With your lower-body clothed, you wrap yourself in your shirt before buttoning it up and finally equipping your blazer to complete your suit. Fully clothed, you head over to a mirror and brush your unkempt hair into a more neater and slick form. Noticing the slight scruff of facial hair visible on your cheeks, you grab your shaver and remove the offending hairs and pouring some water from the sink onto your hands. Then, you wipe the water onto your face to completely remove the hair to leave your face smooth and pale in the light above. You run a hand across your throat once you spot the faint cut from the night prior, so you gather some water into your hand and wash the small wound to clean it. Dabbing a small towel onto your face and neck, you exit the bathroom and enter the kitchen.
Hearing your stomach rumble loudly, you slide some toast into the toaster and sit yourself on your living room chair. Lifting the hospital letter from the coffee table, you recline into your chair and open the envelope. Tugging the letter from it's envelope, you scan your eyes across the paper and, unsurprisingly, you notice that it's just as you expected. A letter asking for you to return to the hospital for a quick check up to make sure you're fit enough to leave the hospital. Yeah, not happening. You toss the letter onto the coffee table and instead just grab all the unopened envelopes. Two gain your interest, but nothing more than that. One of the pair had Princess Celestia's royal seal and the other had Princess Luna's royal seal. Both seemed to be invitations for a meet-up at a Canterlot restaurant owned by your good friend Fancy Pants. You met the guy when you visited Canterlot a couple months back at a café. Seemed a decent enough type, so you then met his other buddies who also seemed pretty rich too. You spoke with them for a bit and they seemed interested in making a deal with you. It was that you would draw or paint art of things from your world and then sell them for quite some money to Fancy Pants and his buddies so that they could have paintings and drawings of completely alien things which they could sell on. Later on, this trade just entailed you drawing what you wanted and they still gave you quite a hefty sum, since you were making so much money for them. Something about how your hands were the most useful limbs when it came to art, and that even the races with hands similar to yours didn't have the same skill. You don't mind as long as you get some form of income for it, though you like how you get money from going onto hills and painting the landscape with a cool breeze blowing through your hair and warm air surrounding you.
Setting the two royal invitations aside, you spot a letter from Fancy Pants himself. Opening the envelope, you find that he had sent an invitation for a meet-up in Canterlot, with a first-class ticket for the train included. And he's also wrote to meet him at the same restaurant you met his friends at. With a grin, you place the letter into your blazer's pocket and seal the ticket into your trouser pocket. Standing up, you turn to Albert who watches you curiously.
"Albert, make sure to let Sebastian inside when he returns." You say, more joyful than how you spoke to Derpy. Albert then gives you a mock-salute with one of his black legs before scuttling further into his house.
The sound of the toaster's alarm rings out, so you run into the kitchen and grab the two slices of toast as they shoot out of the toaster and into the air. Grabbing a knife and some butter, you smear the butter across the toast before eating it quickly. On your way out, you grab a large pouch of bits from the coffee table and tuck it into your blazer's inner pocket. With your long legs, your steps eat away the distance between the living room and the door until you open up the door, locking it, before joyfully leaping off your porch once you get into a run towards the train station. You manage to reach the roads leading into Ponyville in your mad dash across the town. Step by step, you feel your heart hammer in your chest as you grin madly at the prospect of going to Canterlot. You were always a fan of the city, and many of the paintings you sold included it. Mostly because of your love of the city's appearance and also because many of the buyers who would buy your art also lived in Canterlot.
You reach the final road leading to the train station, and you can see your "friends" walking towards it slowly. Even the perverted pegasus from this morning was with them, and even the groping tailor unicorn. You shake your head as you continue to barrel onwards towards the station. Once you're close to the wooden platform, your speed decreases into regular walking as you calm our heart down. Straightening out your shirt, you take a seat on one of the many train station benches as you await your train. Seated comfortably, you unfold Fancy Pant's letter from your pocket and also the train ticket. Reading through them again to pass the time, you soon notice a magenta aura wrap around the letter as it's lifted from your possession. Infuriated, you look up with cold eyes at the thief, who happened to be a lavender unicorn.
"Are you going to Canterlot as well?" Twilight asks happily.
"Yes, I am." You say coldly as you snatch the paper from her magic and tuck it into your pocket. You seal the train ticket into your trouser pocket, just to be safe.
She gives you a hurt expression, but you keep your face stoic and emotionless as you cross your arms and look to the train's arrival times. Reading them leads you to thank whatever deity is watching over you under your breath, as you see that the train will arrive in five minutes. Applejack trots up beside Twilight's downtrodden form, before the orange Earth Pony turns to look at you before chuckling quietly. You respond with a hateful glare.
"Well, that's sure a fancy suit!" She says in that typical redneck voice.
"Well, that's sure a dumb hat!" You reply in a mocking tone.
She looks taken aback before snorting steam through her nostrils. Spinning around, she prepares to buck you with her hind legs. You raise your shoe from off the ground and kick her roughly in the flank. She cries out in pain before rolling forwards, off the platform, and comes to a stop with her head buried in the dry mud in front of the train station. Her friends cry out and run to her aid as Twilight turns back to you in horror, as you watch Applejack buck blindly into the air whilst laughing hysterically. Hearing the train approaching, you stand up and head over to it whilst giggling. With one shoe on the train's steps, you turn around and give a mock salute to the group as you board the train. Applejack could only watch, dazed, with her hair full of dry earth. Once inside, you head to the first-class area and sit down calmly.
"Ticket please." Asks the train conductor.
"Here." You reply joyfully as I hand him my ticket, before he stamps it and hands it back as he leaves to take tickets from other passengers.
Looking down at your suit, you admire the black material with it's white details. The fabric is comfortable whilst being incredibly durable and stretchy to handle your agile movements. The white details were thin stripes which are stitched in a vertical pattern across the entire suit except your socks and shoes since they are pure black like your boxers. The stripes are close together so they are almost unnoticeable. Ordering a coffee from a passing cart, paying with a couple bits, you begin to sip idly on the beverage as the train begins to move. Hearing angry mumbling and hoofsteps, you see the group of six mares sit down in the seats on the opposite side of the train to you. You hear requests to talk to them now and again, but you just completely ignore them as you lean back in your chair and watch Canterlot approaching.
Chapter: 3
"Please, Anon, what's wrong?!" Twilight screams.
For the entire trip, Twilight has been asking you this question with her emotions growing every time she asks. Of course, you've ignored her each time. Your face has been fixed in a scowl ever since she started, and it seems her little friends are reaching the end of their rope with you. Crossing your arms, you finally acknowledge Twilight.
"What do you want?" You ask coldly.
"Why are you being like this?!" She screeches.
"Why do you need to know? It's not like your my friends or anything." You reply with your eyes dead and emotionless.
A shocked silence fills the first-class area like a thick mist, Twilight's face frozen in horror and shock. You hear the comical sound of a balloon deflating, as you turn to the source of the sound you can see Pinkie Pie's face twisted into a deep frown with her hair lifeless and limply hanging down. Tears brew in the corner of her eyes before she erupts into full wails and begins to sob loudly onto the wooden floor. She suddenly latches onto your ankle with her pink hooves and begins to beg you to forgive her for whatever she did. She stares into your cold eyes with her teary blue ones before you fling her off your leg which sends her into the train's wall. Applejack rises from her seat with a fiery glare, dirt still in her hair from her previous encounter with you, before your own glare meets hers as she sits back down with angry mumbles.
You hear the train come to a stop at Canterlot's train station, which turns your deep frown into a mad grin as you dash for the door. Your fingers brush across the door handle, but you walk back to your table and grab your coffee. Once the cup was in hand, you go to down the remains before you feel a weak tapping on your thigh. Turning your eyes downwards, they meet the blue ones of the butter-yellow pegasus, Fluttershy. Frowning, you lean downwards until your face-to-face with her.
"What do you want?" You ask harshly.
"W-why aren't we your friends?" She asks nervously.
Your eyes scan over the group until they meet the magenta eyes of the rainbow maned pegasus, Rainbow Dash. She visibly recoils in fear from your gaze, shivering under your unnerving stare. Your face twists into a scowl as you slowly turn back to Fluttershy.
"Are you friends with her?" You ask, pointing a bony digit towards Rainbow Dash.
"W-well, yes. W-e'll a-always be her friend." She whimpers out.
You lean down further until your face is just inches from hers, your dead blue eyes staring deeply into her own blue eyes. Your scowl is deeper now, your face twisted into a frosty frown. The darkness around your eyes seems to steal all the light Fluttershy sees, the deep purple and back hanging beneath your eyes contrasts with the paleness of your skin. Your pupils slowly reduce in size until they are but pinpricks surrounded by white and blue. You mouth opens slightly as your scowl intensifies, revealing your marble-coloured teeth and pointed canines to the now weakly whimpering pegasus. Your mouth then slowly turns into a fake smile, more of a wicked grin, which still flashes your predatory teeth.
"I don't even want to know those who would befriend betrayers like her." You say, pointing at Rainbow Dash for emphasis.
Without a final word, you rise to your full height before drinking the remnants of your coffee. Once finished, you set the porcelain cup down on your table before exiting the train. Breathing in the fresh mountain air, you begin whistling a jolly tune. Leaping into the air, your long legs allow you to jump from carriage to carriage as you head down a main road. Your pointed shoes allow your steps to be more precise as you leap across gaps whilst whistling. Your hands find their way into your pockets as you relax within the calming atmosphere of the evening's warmth, your mind clear of any thoughts regarding your past friends. A malicious joy fills your body as you chuckle at your earlier behaviour. Passers by give nervous glances as they see you.
Your eyes scan the street's establishments until you spot the restaurant you'll be meeting your new friends at. You head towards the two ponies at the door after removing your hands from your pockets, forming a better posture and smoothing your clothing. One is a unicorn stallion with a white coat and a golden helmet obscuring his mane. Along with the helmet is a set of golden hoof-guards and a gold chest plate with some segmentation. A solar guard? The other seems to be his opposite, with this pony being a bat-pony mare with a grey coat. Taking unnaturally long strides towards the door, you attempt to enter but the guards hold out a single one of their wings and intentionally block your path. Frowning, you take two small steps back and give a questioning look at the two guards.
"The Princesses are both here tonight. Don't do anything stupid and you'll be fine." They say together before retracting the wings blocking your path.
Giving a cold, obviously fake smile, you enter the restaurant and immediately spot the two large Alicorns. They both sit on separate tables, staring at each other in confusion. Then they hear the door closing behind you and turn towards you before grinning excitably. Rolling your eyes, you scan the room for the group you REALLY came to see. Through the dim lighting, you spot the group of nobles seated in the corner of the room, filling the ambient air around them with hushed, secretive whispers. Quickly moving towards the table, greeted by the group in regular volume, you seat yourself on one of the red, comfortable seats made from some form of cloth. Resting your forearms onto the wooden table's top, you lean towards the centre of the table with your head slightly turned downwards. The dim candle light from above shadows your face, leaving only your mouth and it's predatory teeth revealed to the group.
"What's with the secrecy?" You ask in a whisper more akin to the hiss of a viper.
The group seems quite nervous, before leaning close to address the details.
"We have a, erm, job for you..." Says Fancy Pants in a shaky whisper.
"What kind?" You ask back.
They get a nervous look in their eyes, scanning the room for eavesdroppers, before leaning in closer.
"We need you to steal something from the Canterlot Archive's Forbidden Section." They all whisper in unison.
Chapter: 4
For the first time in months, your eyes actually widened. Slightly. Your cynical side overcame the surprise, making a dark yet questioning scowl cross your features. Calmly, you lean forwards with your arms crossed and flat against the wooden table, your sleeves laying atop the wood. The single candle in the centre of the table cast an orange glow across your face, with the darkness created by it consumed your eyes in shadows.
"And what is it I need to take?" You ask, your voice growing more rough and more like a hammer smashing a rock.
The group hiss out at you, frantically looking side to side to check for any listeners who may have overheard you. You acknowledge the silencing with an unnoticed change in your expression. Your eyes grow slightly more bloodshot, as blood rushes to your head as your tattered mind begins processing multiple things all in quick succession. The thoughts mostly consisting on various ways of retribution for the silencing you just endured. They give a couple more glances around the room before coming in closer again. None of the group, nor you, noticed the silently curious solar Alicorn closing her eyes to focus in on the conversation.
"Well, we don't want you to "steal" anything really. We just want a tad bit of information..." Whispers Fancy Pants.
"Oh, so it's espionage? How interesting..." You breathe out.
Fancy quickly shakes his furred head, before continuing on. He, the rest of the group, and you are completely oblivious to the Celestial ruler who silently changed tables to draw slightly closer.
"We just want you to take a photo of an appropriate page in..." He Stops and breathes in for dramatic effect. "... Princess Celestia's diary." He finishes with a worried expression.
Your form practically radiates scrutiny.
"And why should I do that?" You say in an even tone.
"We only want information so we can buy something she wants for her coming birthday..." Says Blueblood nonchalantly.
"Fine, I'll do it." You say in a monotone voice.
They all whisper a cheer, whilst under the eye of the mischievous Celestial diarch who heard their proclamation with amusement.
"But I'll need some things." You say as a impish grin starts to spread across your shadowed face.
After some lengthy negotiations (which you usually came up tops on due to your ever decaying mental state, and your promise of wrath delivered by any simple scowl) you stand from the table and shake the hands of those around it. Blueblood questions you on why you're not staying for a drink, but you say that you'll just grab a quick tankard of the weak booze they sell in this world of technicolour (one of the few things you remember about your home world is that the alcoholic drinks made you worry about liver damage in excess, not draining your pocket trying to find the one drip of ethanol). You make sure to whisper the more important reason for your departure, which was that you wanted to begin preperations immediately.
You say your goodbyes and turn around to leave. Your steps are unnaturally silent given your height, though your drastically thin due to being in a hospital only recently and having not ate much in recent days. You pass through the door, without giving a word to a couple different voices calling out to you with one using very old dialect. The door gives a gently chime as you exit, a breeze of cool night air wafting across your form. You can see a technicolour of six forms to your left in the corner of your vision, so you do the most sensible thing and go to your right. You ignore the familiar voices, probably just random tourists or nobles your mind is mistaking the voices of. You keep traversing the winding streets of Canterlot until you reach the dingiest looking bar you've ever seen.
With a deep breath, you enter the bar by pushing open the creaking wooden door. You shut the door behind you, and approach the bartender who is occupied in wiping glasses clean with a rag. The bottles behind the grey earth pony have labels barely holding onto the glass containers. He lifts the cup into the air with an inquisitive green eye glaring into the object's vacant space to check for remaining mess with his brown mane dangling down most of his snout. You seat yourself on one of the few stools and give a fake cough into your fist to attract the owners attention. He looks at you with a wide eye for a moment before regaining his composure and setting the object of his attention down on the wooden bar. His cutie mark is obscured from view by the withered black duster coat the stallion is wearing.
"What can I get you?" He asks in a surprisingly happy tone.
"Any mead?" You ask with a deadpan look as you glance up from the wooden bar with the candle light from above casting an even large shadow across your eyes than in the restaurant.
His smile wavers as a drop of sweat slowly runs down his forehead which he quickly rubs with the back of a forehoof.
"Coming right up, sir!" He says before dashing quickly to the wall of "alcohol". He frantically scans the wall before punching the air with a hoof in both relief and success. He spins back around and pours some amber liquid into the glass he had cleaned recently. He hands you your beverage and continues cleaning the place. He begins mopping up the wooden floor, sweeping up any dirt or dust and finally continuing on by cleaning the rest of the glasses. He sits himself down and shifts in the stool on the other side of the bar, casting shifty glances at you at random points. You can't really blame him, though. Even you would give a second look at someone if they were a completely unheard of race sat at a bar with the light above them having no success in revealing their entire face. You look down into the drink, lost in thought. Your mind drifts through happier times and memories when you weren't as cynical and had all the six mares from Ponyville as your close friends.
You come back to the present to take a quiet sip of your drink, the liquid being surprisingly pleasant for the bar it came from. It's not real booze, but it's even better than most drinks you've had in this world. It tastes like honey mixed with sugar and stirred into a thin liquid and boiled. Though that does admittedly sound vile, the drink still makes you crave for the second sip which you swallow much quicker. You shrug your shoulders and tip back your head whilst draining the entire cup in one go. You swallow deeply before releasing a breath you didn't know you were holding. You thank the barkeeper and pass him 2 bits out of your pocket. He takes one bit and slides it back over to you before telling you that the drink only costs a single one of the gold coins.
Knowing the amount of bits you brought wasn't necessary since your train ticket was also a return ticket, you slide the coin back to the barkeeper and ask for more of the same drink. He takes your coin and replaces it with another glass of the delicious beverage. Coin after coin is exchanged over a few hours, with you growing annoyed at the size of your glass and asking for a full-on tankard capable of holding enough of the drink which would cause even the largest of dragons to collapse. A few patrons come into the bar, one even running outside and bringing back a group of stallions who join the rest of the room in watching you down more and more of the drink. More and more enter the bar until an actual news crew arrive and photograph you drinking more and more of the liquid. But you don't care, because the bar getting more exposure actually causes the barkeeper to deny some bits and gives you free drinks at random points.
You love this mead. It's good, but it's not quite Carling.
Chapter: 5
It continues to amaze you how much of this drink you can down, but all good things must end. Paying the cost of your final cup, you stand up and ask the barkeeper directions to the nearest toilet to relieve yourself. He gives a short laugh before pointing you to a door on the left, which has what seems to be a stallion depicted in black on a silver rectangle of metal. Giving a quiet thanks, you leap through the door and close it quickly. Unbuttoning your custom-made trousers, you allow the build-up of liquid to stream into the urinal which is much closer to the ground than you would expect. Finishing, you re-button your clothing and approach the nearby sink, turning the tap to allow warming water to douse across your pale hands. Only now can you notice the dim lighting, the damp clutching the walls and the putrid stench occupying the room like a festering ghoul. Your mind wanders once more, thoughts passing by you as the appendages under the tap grow more and more red from the ever growing temperature spilling over them. Your thoughts are dark, twisted versions of past events catching up to you. Your crumbling mental state decays even more as it attempts to subdue the overflow of memories and images of what happened so recently.
The knife wasn't even sharp, the force driving it's motion sickly and fuelled by anguish or maybe grief. You can't truly recall her emotions, but you knew who it was all the same. Her face was masked in such sadness you don't even know how she could even do what she did, but what matters is that she DID do it. Was it the overwhelming sadness she felt which caused the lack of aim? Thickening tears drowning her magenta globes? Or was it an inferno of rage cloaked in a cyan fur, wishing you more pain by inflicting non-fatal damage? The sound of her rage-caused yells and screams and pain-fuelled sobs rings in your ears louder and louder like a furious banshee wailing at your side. Your hands subconsciously fling to the sides of the sink, away from the searing water, and clench around the porcelain basin.
Had your home been more well-lit, you would have been able to see her approach with the instrument of what could have been your demise. But that wouldn't have been the case. You had came home later than you would have liked that night, and you were going through your house lighting each lantern to illuminate your home. You had entered the kitchen and lit the final lantern in the house, only for the orange rays cast by the light-giving object to glint across something metallic... and lethal. What was also cast by the light was the magenta irises of a very emotionally unstable being. When she pounced from the dark to inflict the first, and last, stab you knew just who doomed you. It wasn't your mind shutting down which made your chest go numb, it was your assaulter's identity. You knew that the stab would kill you quickly without true medical treatment, which you didn't have. You lost all feeling in your limbs as your mind tried to shut off to save itself from turning mad, and your arms lost even more feeling also because of the bone-breaking hug your assailant was giving you.
You had lost all hope of survival quickly, you felt your end drawing nearer and nearer with each breath. You lost your will to fight it, simply letting your body lay numb and still on the wooden floor and letting your fate draw closer. Was it this act of acceptance which drew the sense back to the murderous psychopath of what you once considered a peaceful creature? Nevertheless, she latched onto you and ended up coating the cyan fur of her underside in your thick crimson ichor. Once she realised this, she sprang into action and "dashed" out the window screeching promises of aid in her usual scratchy voice whilst giving teary eyed apologies with each breath she could muster. You barely lifted your hand into the air in a desperate bid to crawl out the front door before being devoured whole by the endless darkness of unconsciousness.
You became more akin to a brick after that night. You were caged in an endless cycle of unconsciousness and a few minutes of being awake, making you able to hear distant conversations and sometimes speech by doctors in your hospital room as they discussed your condition. Each time you were awake, your vision was blurred and fogged by drowsiness and your hearing relayed echoing voices, distorted and like glass had been coated around your ears. What you normally heard from the doctors discussing your limp body as you lay under white sheets was always grave and filled you with hopelessness. They figured you were under the effects of a coma, and each time they would always discuss the fact they didn't expect you to recover or even awake at all. They even discussed who would end up deactivating the machines keeping your weakened heart beating. You knew in the back of your mind that despite being able to awake randomly, you would soon perish once the machines switched off and you couldn't do a thing about that. Each time you awoke, you would listen to the voices around you and try to rotate your dry eyeballs towards the drawn curtains to allow you to see the beauty of the outside since every time you succumbed to sleep you didn't expect to awaken. Sometimes you wished your end would come quickly, as the constant nightmares you faced in unconsciousness chiselled away at your mental health more and more.
Visions of nightmarish creatures tearing your body asunder were an unfortunately common occurrence, making them worse was the agonising pain inflicted wherever they struck you. You felt every slice, cut and tear as if they were striking your real body and you could never stop them. You resorted to fleeing and hiding from them, but they always caught you and filled you with more and more dread each time you slipped into slumber. You could feel your very humanity get stolen away with each "death" you suffered, what was a blessing and a curse was that these "deaths" rarely occurred. Despite undergoing massive structural damage and loss of "blood", you would stay alive just so you could feel the constant stream of agony and lack of mercy these abominations had. They would lunge at you from the shadows and drag you to the floor whilst mashing their horrid jaws together like stubby scissors making you feel each individual tooth penetrate the skin of your neck and back as the jaws clamped onto your form. You would barrel down endless hallways of stone and tile to escape them only to be dragged to the ground by a curved claw hooking through the flesh of your back and sinking those jaws into your body. It wasn't just the promise of searing pain which made you run from them once in their presence, but their appearance. Horrific monstrosities incapable of existing in reality, but that thought didn't ease your suffering in the slightest. They squirmed around on the floor, always leaving a trail of blackening blood in their path as they shambled around in search of you and you alone. Their bodies were twisted and deformed, torsos of rotting human flesh with nothing but trailing organs and rotting flesh tailing behind them. They had no legs, but what they used acted as them. Within the trail of organs and decaying matter behind them were always coiling tentacles of deep grey with purple lines running across the slimy skin as veins which pumped and endless quantity of rotting gore around their twisted forms. Lanky white arms ended by two elongated fingers of the same colour to act as a twisted mockery of human hands. The claws on the tips of these fingers were a glistening see-through material but dirt and grime caked the underside of these unnatural weapons since they moved by laying prone on the ground and grasping the stone tiles in a vice-like grip and pulling themselves forwards as movement. Between their pale shoulders was a neck the length of a forearm which would bend and twist in unholy directions to coil around to face you before literally feasting on your face with their monstrous appetite for whatever flesh they could find. You still remember the vision of one of the creatures shambling around in a room only a metre away from your hiding body. In beastly rage, the creature literally tore itself apart to feed the endless pit within it's form. It still lived long enough to look you straight in the eye before it tried to weakly reach for you with it's only remaining arm. It attempted to scream for it's fellows to feed on you, but couldn't. When it grew starving, it's first meal was it's own jaw which it devoured in agony-induced screeches. You kept your mouth shut whilst your heart continued to furiously beat against your ribcage. It attempted to drag itself towards you, but grew still inches from your shivering form. You will never forget the appearance of the being's face. Skin rough and slimy with a gaping maw of serrated teeth of multiple rows with black gums. No nose appeared on it's visage, all there was to see was the creature's slobbering maw ,which continuously dripped grimy saliva, and the empty dark pits it had as eyes which would stare like devouring abysses.
These weren't the only sights you saw in your constant slumber. Sometimes you would slip into unconsciousness only to see a moment of darkness before resurfacing into consciousness weeks later. You would awaken slightly just to hear the same troubling news. But the news grew to portray an even worse image for you, one which would paint a portrait of despair. You would hear the pure joy come from the doctors as they began to say that you were now more certain to live, which made you internally wail in anguish once you figured out that you would live with the memories of those abominations coming for you and devouring your flesh... piece by piece. The news began to grow worse and worse. Your body soon stopped to randomly drop into unconsciousness and you could fight off sleep like you could before. Once this happened, you refused to slumber and stayed awake with your eyes peeled and staring at the far wall and your eyes kept scanning your room frantically. After avoiding sleep for ten days straight, the doctors grew both curious and panicky. They questioned you on your intentions. But you didn't respond. Both because of the oxygen mask strapped across your mouth and the fact you kept your eyes staring past them. It got so bad that the lunar ruler herself, Princess Luna, showed up to visit the only human in Equestria and then asked why you refused to slumber for so long. She kept asking why, over and over and over until she grew angrier and angrier and, in frustration, left the room. With a look of frustration on their own faces, the doctors pinned down you against the bed and held your limbs very tightly. Only then did you blink, but when you did, your eyes reopened with them bloodshot with your pupils even smaller than before. Anger poured through your veins, thrashing around in the bed you attempted to flee but the orderlies were many in number. You reached your head towards the orderly pinning your left arm quickly before mashing your jaws onto the fur of his forearm. Warm blood trickled slightly from the bite and dripped across your tongue, the skin nearly coming with your jaws when another orderly grabbed both sides of your head and pulled you back. The orderly you clenched your teeth on was wailing in agony on the floor with his screams making your ears ring. You used your free arm to attempt a punch towards the pony to your right but a thick blue aura began to pin the once-free arm back down. The aura struggled, your crazed mind pouring adrenaline and fury through your maddened form. Once the arm was successfully held down, you noticed the lunar princess back in the room with sweat on her brow. A doctor rushed in with a syringe of clear liquid, and immediately rushes to the arm held down by the princess' magic. He plunged the needle's tip into the bare skin of your muscled fore arm, straight into a thick and now more visible vein bulging from the growing flow of adrenaline. After a couple minutes of constant fury filled with your adrenaline-fueled thrashing, you yell an almighty scream of animalistic madness before immediately collapsing into your bed.
Your dream wasn't a peaceful one. You first saw an outer-body version of what had happened in your room. You thrashing around and then brutally biting the orderly until you broke through the skin and fur. But that was where the similarities began to distort and warp until what you was seeing made a cold spike of dread go down your spine. The vision showed you collapse onto the bed and those in the room leave, with the bite victim limping due to being quadrupedal and being helped along by another orderly. The vision becomes nightmarish, showing the same vile beings which tormented you for weeks break through the door and position themselves around the hospital room, facing you the whole time. One even climbs onto your bed and begins to stroke your chest mockingly with both of it's grotesque fingers. It then stops with it's fingers on your chest before snapping it's head all the way around and stares at you, knowing exactly where you were watching from. Your vision suddenly darkens, and you sense consciousness return to you, but you remain in darkness. You keep your eyelids sealed tight, fearing the vision from your sleep was a representation of reality. You felt a something thin press against your lips, causing you to clench your eyelids tighter when you thought it was the elongated finger of one of the monstrosities. But when you heard a voice, you slowly opened your eyes to see a pony Nurse trying to take your mouth's temperature with a thermometer. She smiles sheepishly but you fell back into your pillow and breathed a sigh of relief.
You return from the past to find a steady stream of steam flowing upwards in front of you. With a yelp, you reach out and go to turn the tap off only to hear a door closing behind you. You spin around to find a group of five stallions blocking the exit in fighting stances. One approaches, wearing a cliché black jacket and a black bandana around the snout. In each brutes' hoof was what looked like a cheap shiv made of random scraps of metal. The front most stallion approaches you, trying to intimidate you despite the size difference being in your favour.
"You must have a lot o' bits there to buy all 'em drinks..." He growls, a possible grin beneath the bandana.
Your hearing decays, his voice is almost non-existent but it still echoes in your ears. Your vision is mostly blurred like a foggy glass, the area closest to the edge of your sight grows more and more red as tunnel-vision sets in. Your silent reaction is not of fear, but of unquenchable rage. The only place your vision hasn't blurred is the miniscule point where you stare at the blade wielded by the pony. Memories flash by your eyes, the ones where the knife was thrust into your abdomen. Memories of nightmare-fuelled visions which haunted you even in reality, visions like when one nightmare showed the butchering of a live animal which the species of was hidden by the black plastic bag it was contained in. You see the vision clearly, the one of a man dressed in full butcher's uniform with coverings on his mouth which soon grew coated in blood when he began to stab the trapped creature as it wailed in agony. Your mind grows more unstable, cracks form in your sanity akin to the cracks found in abandoned houses' windows when rocks are thrown at the them overtime. You seemingly go numb, you can't feel a thing, and you can't even will your body to move. Your thoughts soon overflow with all the pent-up emotion built through your maddening experience. All the anguish felt as the one who was most loyal to you betrayed your trust, all the pain felt during the never-ending nightmares which plagued you without respite... and all the anger which had been previously frozen by sadness immediately ignites into an inferno. You act without thinking, but with insanity truly fuelling you.
It seems that whilst you ignored the thieves during your trip down memory lane, their leader had grown enraged and charged you and prepared to bring his knife into your abdomen... just like HER. You don't yell and back off in self-preservation, you grab the hoof causing it to freeze in mid-air. The stallion is stunned and looks up at you only for his eyes to grow wide and his pupils to dilate. He looks in your eyes, the most expressive part of a pony which is something all ponies learn to recognise, only to see nothing. He stares into your eyes and sees no emotion or rationality. Just pure, unpredictable, madness. Your eyes are wide open, the blue almost greying, with bloodshot veins in the whites and a dark pupil like a pinprick. He yelps in fear, attempting to jump backwards only to slip from the vice-like grip you have on his forehoof. You hear the bone crack as the force behind his backwards leap and your grip literally pulls the bones apart and snaps the rubber-like cartilage in half. He wails in agony, pleading for his fellow knife-wielding gang mates to aid him. They look in terror but begin to charge you in fiery anger at their leader's treatment. A maddened grin crawls across your face as you swing around the leader like a rag doll in a two-hundred and seventy degree spin. The use of their leader as a blunt weapon sends the rest of the gang flying into the back wall. You hold onto the leader's forearm and raises him to eye-level with you. He pleads over and over for freedom, thrashing this way and that.
"Freedom you say?" You ask mischievously, cracking your neck at almost a right-angle.
He shuts his eyelids to avoid the gruesome sight, and nods furiously up and down whilst tears begin to flow from his eyes freely.
"Oh, I'll give you freedom alright..." You purr devilishly as you reach a finger towards his closed eyes and wipe at the tears matting his fur. His eyes clench even further. You collect a drop of the salty nectar and lick the finger it was collected on. You smack your lips at the sweet bitterness.
Without missing a beat, you hold him by the neck with one of your hands, like your going to strangle him, and tear off his bandana with your other free hand. Clasping the now begging stallion by the neck with both hands, you quickly position his face beneath the stream of boiling water. He cries in burning agony as the searing liquid flows into his eyes and collects in the sockets like feasting ants. Some water even drains into his lungs as he screams in pain, burning the inside of his furred chest. In his instinctual frenzy to escape the liquid-fire, he splashes some onto your hands which are still numb from the insanity flowing through you more than your blood does. You glance over your shoulder to see the rest frozen in fear and unable to run or fight. You've grown bored of this victim and position his eye below the tap raining scalding liquid onto him. His screeches fall on death ears as your hearing decays as madness controls you like a puppet. With a quick burst of insanity-fuelled strength, you pull his face towards the tap at a great speed causing the tap to penetrate his eye and straight into his brain. If he didn't die during the impalement, he's certainly dead from the scalding water filling the void around his brain.
You release your death-grip from the stallions neck and turn around, the whole gang looking at you in shocked disbelief. You fling stray harmless droplets of searing hot water and clench your fists so hard they grow even more whiter than before. One comes to his senses and goes for the door for help and escape, only to be blocked by you as your long legs allow you to effortlessly slip in front of him. You grin down at him, bringing a clenched fist back before launching it forwards. You laugh manically when you see your fist go straight through the weak bone and penetrate his skull all the way through with your fist and forearm bloodied. Crimson liquid spurts forth from the gaping wound and sprays all across the room. Comically, it shoots across the faces of the rest of the gang and causes them to splutter and slip on the blood soaked ground. You look at the limp body and investigate the bandana. What you see is one side is completely black but other is red (and not because of the blood).
"Show me both sides of all your bandanas!" Your crazed voice declares, jabbing a pale finger towards the group.
They fumble around and flip the sides of the bandanas. Each now has unique colours and the look of a universal outfit begins to dissipate when you see their jackets vary in colour with the leader's being black and the other's all having varying shades of grey, brown and blue. A plan formulates. "Hoof prints" hadn't yet been developed in this dark age style world and finger prints were well from being developed. Grinning you advance towards the gang. You strip off your clothing except your boxers and toss them inside a cubicle and on a closed toilet seat. You then seal the cubicle closed to avoid any blood getting onto the clothing. Taking a knife off the floor, you proceed to hack, slash and slice through the mass of fur and flesh. At the end, you step away and admire your handiwork. Around the room are the mangled and butchered corpses of the gang with one posed like he was drowning the gang leader but was stabbed during it. The others are then positioned stabbed and cut with two besides each other like they killed one another at the same moment. You yourself stand with some blood on you which you wash off with a sink not occupied by a corpse or blood (which was a hard task). Cleaning any splashes and checking yourself thoroughly in a mirror, you grab your clothes from the cubicle and dress yourself. Noticing a window at the top of a wall untouched by gore, you slide through it and close the window to avoid speculation even further. You then spot the train rolling into the station a small distance away, causing you to skip merrily towards it whilst cackling.
Chapter: 6
You board the train and present your return ticket swiftly before hurrying to an empty cart. Seating yourself on the cushioned seat, you lean back and sigh with dark contempt. You fold your arms around the back of your neck and shut your eyes in relaxation, waiting for sleep to take you into it's embrace. Which it does. Your presented with a strange yet dark vision in your slumber, as your vision slowly returns to you. You find yourself within a room with four walls and not a single door or window visible. You stand up and attempt to touch a wall only to feel stiff resistance. You stare in confusion at the straight jacket dominating your upper-body with tattered trousers covering your legs with striped slippers at the bottom of the legwear. You fling yourself around the room, only for you to encounter soft, almost loving, padding adorned across the four walls, floor and ceiling. A single solitary light bulb hangs limply from the ceiling, casting a dimming amber glow across the room. The damaged wires attached to the bulb are like a noose around it's neck as it sways in a non-existent breeze. You crumble to your knees, the padding softening the impact, and begin to whimper softly from the ever-tightening confinement. Your vision slowly decays to darkness, consciousness gradually coming ever nearer to you. And finally, you awake.
Your eyes snap open and dart around the train cart, noticing the shadows drawing closer and closer. Moonlight is your only light source as it streams in through the open windows like silver water. Darkness dances almost mockingly in the corners of your sight, figures appearing only to be figments of your rotting mind. You curl up in the cushioned seat and grab your mop of hair in vice-like hands as your heart pulses with more and more ferocity. The miniscule sound of the passing breeze caused by the train's movement is almost deafening in your silent isolation. Your breathing is guttural, low and has an ever-growing frequency as a maddened panic fills your very core. Your eyes seal shut to avoid the hallucinations you see in the darkness, visions of deformed monstrosities feeding once filling your sight no longer able to grace your eyes with their gruesome visages. But, when you thought fear had devoured you, the sun's light finally pierced the clinging darkness. The solar rays filter through the glass windows and settle around the room, cleaning it of inky shadows. The hallucinations dissipate into thin air, but you still hear their deafening wails of agony and the crunch of bones and splatter of gore. The sunlight streaming into the carriage runs across your face, thus causing the sounds to slowly decrease in volume until they are but whispers. A sudden knock resounding around the carriage quickly dissipates the remaining volume the hallucinations had, the source of the relief being the wooden door behind you.
"Erm... are you okay, sir?" Asks a nervous voice behind you, which causes you to open your eyes and jolt up from your seat.
Before you stands a dishevelled pony stallion of brown coat and orange mane, who is currently staring at you with wide yellow eyes. You breathe a sigh of relief before lowering your arms to your sides, cracking your neck from left to right.
"Yes. I am." You reply roughly before tapping your boot on the wooden floorboards.
"Well... we're at Ponyville station now..." He says before you cut him off by leaving the carriage, trying to exit the train.
With your long gait you swiftly pass through Ponyville, trying to ignore the passing worried glance they would give you. What you didn't know was that they were worried FOR you, not worried that you would hurt them. That's what made their expressions even more pained as you began to berate them for their insolence, yelling the foulest of terms into the summer air. You storm through the town and reach your home in record time, slamming the door shut once you enter. You begin pacing the living room madly, fumbling your hands together, before groaning in frustration and falling backwards into your armchair. You put your head in your hands and stay like that for what feels to you like an eternity, just sat in near darkness as the rays of sunlight slowly decay with the coming sunset. The weight of the world, and then some, seems to sit on your shoulders as you bask in the shadows cast by the sun's dying light.
But then you remember your task given to you by Fancy Pants, causing you to grin and stand up. With quick movements, you open the door to your basement/cellar and activate the lantern on the way down the wooden steps. Locking the door behind you, you approach the workbench casts in the amber glow of the lantern above. Deposited around the room is random plates and scrap metal collected when you had some left-over metal after building your home. It was expected of you when you first arrived to live with one of the elements but you declined and worked day and night to build your own home. You didn't want to be around these ponies so much that you would sleep under their roof. Regardless, you've accumulated quite the collection of trinkets, materials and scrap. Stepping over this and that, you reach the workbench itself and take a sheet of paper out of one of it's draws. Rolling the sheet on the wooden top, you begin to sketch your designs until you reach on what calls out to you the most.
The design is very peculiar, but given the mind it came from that isn't to hard understand. The design is that of a costume which also acts as a great disguise and armour without looking too organic. The suit is to have a size slightly bigger than you due to the mechanisms which will be on the boots to give more force. The boots themselves are metal with fake black boots to cover the top but leaving the soles as metal pads which are part of the mechanism. Fake metallic claws poke out from theses fake boots to give both more grip to surfaces and for extra damage behind kicks. The legs of the suit will be made from metal plates formed from steel on your calves and thighs with the metal begin in more segmented rings near joints. This will be the last layer of protection the on your legs before something would reach your casual clothes which will go beneath the suit. Coating the suit to disguise it's true purpose is a thick layering of thick fake fur of a generally grey colouration. The crotch of the suit has even more segmented metal pieces with the same fur as the rest, but here a pair of fake light brown shorts will begin and end at a length long enough to reach the knees of the suit. The stomach and chest area have a white fur which covers thick metal segments and plates. The chest has more metal for better protection against direct hits to it, adding to the suit's purpose as an armour. Slung over the fur on the suit's chest is a thick deep brown t-shirt which will give anything who sees the suit the impression that it's truly a Diamond Dog. Adding to this illusion is the elongated canine muzzle attached to the suit's head which will act as a mask. The eyes are glossy, lenses which block sight going in but allow the suit's user to see out. The muzzle's jaw is lined with serrated metal teeth, the actual throat being an inky blacks topping anyone on the outside from seeing the user. An artificial throat is also part of the design, a metal tube leading from the muzzle down into the chest area of the suit where a metal hollow tank will sit. This will collect any matter collected for easy disposal. A few tweaks in the design are still necessary, but you can't help the look of impish delight from crossing your features as you rub your palms together devilishly.
Chapter: 7
It had been at most a week since you've stepped outside your home. Deep blue wrinkles beneath your eyes contrast greatly with the paled skin across your face, a sign of your sleep deprivation as you force your body to go even longer without rest. Even if you did black-out a couple times, it only seemed to allow your body to continue without true rest, as you never felt much difference when you awoke slumped over your workbench. Coffee cups, void of their rich warm liquid, lay strewn randomly across your basement, scattered among tools and excess materials. You'd discarded your formal attire long ago when you started the suit's construction, favouring some tacky overalls instead.
Stains of all manner of substances lay splattered across your clothing, sweat beneath the rags accumulating causing your body to give off a putrid odour caused by the strain of work forced onto yourself. The thick, leather-like gloves and apron worn by you have small and large charred patches and burns due to the forging completed thus far. As far as you can see, only the legs have been properly completed, though the pneumatic parts aren't even fitted to the boots yet since you'll need to buy supplies to finish them. Which brings you to the next order of business, going outside for the first time in a week.
Sighing to yourself, wiping the grime from your forehead only to look at the collection of it on the back of your hand with disgust, you silently wander upstairs and lock the basement door tightly. You want to keep this little project to yourself, so you don't need some curious pony stumbling across the designs and unfinished suit. With the grace of a drunk, you slump through your bathroom door and slip into the bath, activating the tap which begins to leak a torrent of mildly heated water into the tub. Once the water reaches to your neck, you disable the tap and strip off your disgusting garments. Thoroughly scraping at the grime clinging to your form, you finally feel much cleaner. You rush through the cleaning just enough so that you step out at a fairly decent cleanliness.
Shaving off any excess hair on your facial features and snipping off unruly stands from the ash-black mop on your head, you trudge out the bathroom and towards your bedroom. You step unsteadily upstairs and collapse onto your carpet floor, but with a jolt of energy you attempt to stand up only to slump over and slam your shoulder against your wardrobe with a grunt escaping your lips. Rubbing your aching shoulder, you open the wardrobe and grab some simple clothing, a t-shirt and trousers with a pair of socks and boxers. Pulling on your lower-body's garments, you begin to tie your shoes laces before descending the stairs whilst casually slipping on your shirt. You quickly snatch a bag of bits from your living room table, as you want to at least enjoy yourself after buying the required things. Rubbing a hand through your pitch-black mess of hair, you open your front-door and exit the house. Locking the door tightly behind you.
Your trip is thankfully more peaceful than you'd expect, any passers by giving you more of a wide-berth. Probably because of your dishevelled appearance. With your path fixed towards the market, you gradually reach the large set of stalls selling a variety of items and trading with the daily gathering of pastel equines. But one stall catches your attention, which is the opposite for all the other buyers in the market. The stall is void of any customers, with only a bored elderly stallion sat behind it with a hoof to his cheek in boredom. Bounding across the market you reach the curious stall and tap your bony finger on the wooden counter, attracting the elder's undivided attention.
"What do you sell?" You ask quietly, eying the pony with darkened eyes.
"Well, I sell metals that I forge myself. I also sell copies of some old books if you want to see them." He says with a gravelly voice, once he recomposed himself.
You crack a smile and ask if you can see his stock. He agrees rather hesitantly, but allows you to view them unhindered. Probably wanting at least some of his stuff sold. You ignore his uncertainty and begin idly scanning the items, intrigued by the metals shown. You also take an interest in the old tomes on display, some with quite useful looking content if the titles are anything to go by. Books involving mechanisms and technomancy soon are held in the clutches of your pale hands, as do a random assortment of metal ingots and other metallic items. You hand him the items and pass him the appropriate amount of currency decided by the furry vendor. You request a bag, to carry your items in a more efficient way, which is a request he obliges with a knowing nod.
Taking the brown paper bag of items, you quickly return home to just place the bag on your basement workbench before locking the doors once more on the way out again. No reason for you not to enjoy your day before shuffling back into your basement, after all. With your bag of bits stuffed into your trouser pocket, you let your arms slowly sway as you move across the town. The baggy deep brown trousers wafting slightly in the cool breeze, the wind sifting up your light brown shirt. Your footwear was tacky with splattered mud stains across the black leather boots reaching up to the top of your ankles. The deep brown trousers worn on your legs had their ends tucked into these leather boots.
Your steps bring you to the outside of some pony restaurant, some of the equine residents sat outside at metal and plastic tables with tacky colouring used for the topmost plastic surface. You hesitate slightly, taking your usually quick steps but with a more calculated look around the area. The restaurant itself seems to have the typical hay-roofing which wasn't unusual for the town. The walls made from a high-quality wood which seems to give you the impression that the large quantity of bits in your pocket seems to be barely enough for a meal here. Regardless, you enter the restaurant and shift uneasily towards an empty table. A strange thing which made you relieved was the fact none of the staff were stood at the door, which would have signalled that you needed to be on a list to get a table. This was not the case, so you took the table without incident. A small dingy plastic table, a dim candle positioned in the centre of the cheap white circle. White painting was donned on the walls, many more of the plastic tables scattered around the room. A cheap wooden bar sits at the far end of the room, one pony stood behind it greeting the many patrons once they approached the bar.
You sit on one of the many foldable chairs which seemed to be the only type of seat available in the entire establishment. You tap your fingers against the plastic, a slight tinge of unease sitting in the pit of your stomach. A strikes of paranoia begin to shoot down your spine, the feeling of freezing rods falling across your back. Drops of sweat clinging to your forehead, dripping down your eyebrows and slipping onto your firmly locked fingers. You begin to shiver, your locked fingers rising to your forehead as another seizure-like attack forces itself upon you. You shake violently, silent whimpers coming from your mouth as your lips remain tightly fixed shut with the only sound being muffled raspy sobs.
Then THEY came. The usual patrons were no more, replaced by gruesome visages. Hunks of raw, rotting flesh emitting a putrid stench which wafted up your nostrils and causing your voice to reduce even further as your throat begins to tighten to shut out the disgusting odour. These mashed up forms of festering gore are positioned in almost comical sitting positions. The forms then snap their "faces" towards you, eye sockets forming as flesh begins to slip from their faces to form void sockets. Decayed green and yellow liquid slowly dribbles from the sockets and slides down the false muzzles to drip onto the tiled floor with a deafening echo. Even more flesh falls from the faces with a loud "slop" as it collides with the floor, causing you to fling from your chair and slam your back against the cheap painting. The impact causing a loud crash to resound around the room in the form of a monstrous echo. The faces snap towards your new position, with some faces turning to each other whilst "whispering". As they attempted to whisper, a similar colour decayed liquid slips from their jaws in an endless torrent, their jaws acting broken and flailing in the air as they attempted to move their jaws to speak. A putrid tongue slaps around the loose jaws of each hunk of flesh, decayed and bloody it splatters the rotten liquid across the cheap plastic tables and one another. A low guttural yipping comes from them as they attempt to whisper, their flayed lips breathing out unnatural sounds.
You whimper even more as the creatures from your past nightmares begin to shamble from beneath the cheap plastic tables, scuttling towards you with guttural hisses and screeches emanating from their fanged maws. You frantically begin to yell for help, and, with adrenaline fuelling your body, you fling a plastic table towards the shambling figures which causes the sound of high-pitched screeching and unnervingly loud wailing. You shield your ears and sprint towards the door, slamming it open with a shoulder and shoving it closed once you exit. You keep your eyes firmly shut to spare them from any more horrors and find yourself in a dark alleyway where you begin to sob in anguish with your eyes buried in your arms to block any sights.
You just sit there in the darkness for at least a couple hours, cradling yourself with your eyes locked shut whilst rocking back and forth against the cobblestone wall at your back. It takes the courage of the Five Hundred to open your eyes to the world once more, finding nothing but inky black both unnerving you and acting as a thick blanket of dark comfort. You shuffle nervously out the darkness, feeling your breathe warm against the freezing night. The coolness sucks away your warmth as you shiver, cooling your body and mind from the near-traumatising event you... think you witnessed? You can't be mad, that definitely did happen!
...Didn't it?
It only took you a couple minutes to make your way back to your home, even more nervous glances coming your way as ponies pass you by whilst whispering to one another as they glanced at you. You don't berate them for it. Instead, you stay silent whilst rubbing your arms uneasily as you pass them, eyes scanning the grassy ground nervously as you leave the town for the outskirts to your wooden house. You enter and close the door only to groan in frustration, as you finally remember that you're missing your bag of items which you bought earlier today, coming to that conclusion when you found yourself lacking the brown bag. Locking the door, you head to the kitchen and make a coffee. Then, once it is made, you return to your living room and settle into your armchair, picking up a random book before flicking the pages as you read silently.
A sudden knock comes from your front door, causing you to glance up nervously. Sighing, you set down your book and now empty cup onto a nearby mahogany table before shambling towards your door. You firmly grasp the door-handle before unlocking it with your free hand. Letting the hand which unlocked the door slip to your side, you use the still gripping hand to slowly open the wooden portal into your household. There, sat on her haunches uncertainly, is the purple form of the town's librarian. She sits there looking up at you nervously, with a half-smile. Sat beside her is a brown bag. A very familiar brown bag.
Chapter: 8
You quickly snatch the bag from her and peer inside, a deep frown carved into your facial features. You give a sigh of relief as you find all your items in the bag, only the sound comes out as more of a low growl as you glare daggers at the purple unicorn. She gives a sheepish smile before it turns to a frown as you attempt to slam the door after recovering your things. The handle is encased in a firm purple glow, halting your progress. You stare at the unicorn with a mix of hatred and bewilderment at the situation, before she opens the door wide enough for her to enter your home whilst shaking her head sadly. You find Twilight in your living room on the couch with a newspaper beside her, a look of concern on her face. You sigh before sitting yourself down in your armchair, knowing she wouldn't have came here if it wasn't important.
"Were worried about you, you know?" She asks sadly, turning to you.
You laugh slightly and reassure her that nothing, absolutely nothing, is wrong with you. She shakes her head, lifting the newspaper to you. Depicted in the centre of the newspaper is a large photograph of the restaurant you were in earlier today, only the room is completely trashed with tables and chairs decimated and lying as nothing but splinters of METAL on the ground. THAT surprised you. It also showed shattered windows and the door you slammed shut earlier swinging from it's brass hinges. Around the photo are quotes and witness statements printed in columns, quite a few given the large amount of patrons you remember being at the establishment. The words "crazed" and "just snapped" are the most commonly printed words printed within these columns. Oh, a statement by the princesses as well? Huh, seems they are VERY concerned about you in the sense that they want you safe and well. But can you trust them, Anonymous? None of the other articles really caught your interest, rumours of a school being built at a place called "Littlehorn" was among these stories.
The newspaper was gently taken from you by a purple aura and set down on the wooden table beside you. You look at Twilight as she fidgeted nervously with her front hooves, tapping them together slightly. She looks at the bag of items set next to you on the floor and begins to murmur quietly, not having the courage to say what she wanted loudly enough to reach your ears.
"You'll have to speak louder if you want me to hear you." You say softly.
"...Well, it's just that I came here after I heard about what happened to you, but I found your door locked. I thought you were home and needed help, so I opened the door with my magic. I checked everywhere but couldn't find you, so I checked the basement, which was locked also." She says apologetically with her head bowed low.
You wave your hand and insist she continue.
"I found that bag-" She stops to indicate to the brown bag on the floor with a hoof before continuing "-On your workbench and thought it could be a hint to what happened to you. I picked up the bag but had to rush to the library to use some books on psychology to see if I could match up any clues. Though... the books didn't point to anything other than you doing some metalwork as a hobby, he he he..." She laughs sheepishly, rubbing one of her forelegs with the other.
"Well, that answers some of my questions but not one of the biggest. Why didn't you just teleport?" You ask sternly.
"I'm not exactly in full condition to do so many teleport spells... I've been pretty busy lately..." She replies.
She begins to go through a long-winded speech on what she's been doing since you last saw her. You shut out her voice almost completely, only hearing some part about something big being planned by Princess Celestia, but you don't pay much attention. You nod at random intervals as her words fall on death ears, you don't even notice the fact she's stopped talking and is just watching you bob your head silently at least a dozen times after she stopped talking.
"Anon! Were you paying attention?!" She yells.
"Can't say I was." You reply flatly.
She sighs before recomposing herself. She stares at you for a moment, a stern look crossing her features as she examines your more rugged appearance. Her face takes on a softer, more saddened yet concerned, look than the look she gave you mere moments ago.
"Have you been sleeping?" She asks softly.
You lower your vision to the hands on your lap, the fingers of one hand tapping against those of the other hand nervously as you shake your head. You explain how you've only ever slept when you literally passed out from exhaustion, and that you've not really had many dreams which weren't nightmares. She looks at you sympathetically as you explain, letting you let off what you've had on your chest for so long. You even give a sigh before telling her even more, detailing your hellish experience in the hospital without glossing over anything. It was at midnight when she said her goodbyes and approached your front door, turning around to face you whilst holding the door-handle in her magical grip.
"Are you okay if I come up here tomorrow, to maybe help you with what's happened?" She asks calmly.
You reply with a shrug and give conformation. You didn't have anything to do besides continue building the suit, anyway. Maybe now would be a good time to sleep and wake up early to continue the suit's construction. She smiles at you before turning back towards the door.
"Oh-" She exclaims happily. "-I forgot to mention, nice to see you taking an interest in mechanics!" She shouts back at you in a friendly tone before leaving your house, shutting the door behind her.
You stand up wearily and lock the front door before returning to your armchair, releasing a breathe you've felt way you down for months. A great weight seems to lift from you... slightly. It would be a long road to recovery, but maybe you'll be in a much better condition at the end of that road.
Or, most likely, not.
-
You awake the next morning to the loud rapping at your front door, a thick book positioned on your face. Snorting a breath in shock, you pull the book from your face and set it on your wooden table. You notice that Twilight left behind the newspaper from yesterday, which may or may not have been intentional. It probably doesn't matter, since you'd be surprised if the Princess' prized student couldn't buy another newspaper. You make a note to check it later, for now you have a visitor. Standing up with the bones within you creaking from the welcome rest you've had, you approach your front door and open it hastily.
Standing outside is Derpy herself, with her mailbags at her sides. She looks at you with at first shock, but then a more calm happy expression as if she remembers something. You smile back at her before indicating for her to speak. She sits on her haunches and digs into one of her mailbags, ruffling through it's contents with haste. She quickly pulls out an envelope and holds it out to you, which you take from her whilst looking around the landscape outside. The world outside is a sea of a grassy plain which spans all the way to Canterlot hanging to the mountainside in the distance, a beautiful site from a distance but not as good up close.
"Bye for now, Anon!" She says whilst flying into the clear blue sky above, the only breaks in the sapphire expanse above being the few faint clouds rolling in the distance.
The sun is high in the air, with it's gentle warm rays sliding across your shoulders. You breath in the fresh air, contemplating what you could spend your day doing in this world of so many possibilities, so many magical places and things to see. A whole world almost completely unknown to you, it's arms outstretched and welcoming for your curiosity and wonder.
"Yeah, toilet sounds good." You say to yourself quietly before returning inside, closing and locking the door behind you.
Quickly relieving yourself and finishing your regular routine for the morning, you head into your living room and open up the letter now in your possession. On it is a letter by the Equestrian Court or something detailing how, despite "criminal damage to an establishment" and "signs of severe mental illness", you've been cleared of criminal charges by order of Princess Celestia herself. Now, you know the princess very well. More than even her subjects. You know for a fact that she didn't do this without a hidden agenda, something she has as a habit though she's poor at hiding this habit. You're sure that Twilight coming over last night to subtly hint at her acting as your psychotherapist has no correlation with this here letter. You smirk to yourself at how obvious they can be, but you may as well humour them since it is for your benefit. Gently setting the letter on your table, you flip through the book you found on your face right until the last page. That's as far as you managed to read, after all. You quickly finish your research before setting the book down and heading to your basement, the brown bag from yesterday in hand.
You descend down the stairs after activating the large magical lantern hanging above and scatter the bags contents atop the workbench. You immediately take interest in the pneumatic components, quickly sketching out some blueprints for the boots you begin work on them immediately. Your welder begins to bring the metals to searing temperatures as the plates meld together to form a thick metal boots. Some rings of metal is crafted into wiring to meld around the shins to be the first layer of the suit. Lifting up the boots, now with their basic structure complete, you create a pneumatic propulsion system on the sole of the boots. This new mechanism completely covers the bottom of the boots. Quickly testing the system, you activate it which causes it to push the bottom of the boot outwards causing you to jolt slightly.
Quickly finishing the system, you take the wire layering and add some more metal plates to the wire to create even more defence. And, just for an added bonus, you add a THIRD layer of metal plating. Thankfully this world's metals are just as strong as the drinking in this world, incredibly lightweight. Thinking their almost ready, you take off your boots and tighten the boots to meld onto your form as you equip them. Walking out the backdoor of your home, you engage the system and hold activate the "lunge" function. Bending downwards into a Runner's starting position, you push with all your might into the ground and, absolutely, SHOOT forwards into the grass ahead. You cause a considerably sized trench as you slide across the ground, collecting a mouth-full of soil as you slide across the ground and landing in a heap in the tall grass like a KO'd Pokémon.
Rubbing your head, you stand up from the ground and switch the system to "Leap" mode. This mode is more of a jump, which is available during a run and even when stationary. Testing the stationary jump, you engage the system before going upwards into the air a distance of three metres, forcing you to land onto the ground on all fours to dispel most of the force. Grinning, you start into a quick sprint before engaging the system causing you to jump into the air and land a couple metres forwards. Satisfied with the system, except for the soil once stuffed into your mouth, you return to your basement and link up some wires and circuits to the metal plates, the wiring reaching all the way to the top of the boots. You leave the some circuits at the top of the boots so the wiring can eventually run all the way to the mask, which will act as the "brain" of the suit under your control.
You begin to work on more of the suit, but the sounds of your door being knocked and many voices above distract you.
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.
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.
Chapter: 11
With a muffled, crazed laugh, you lunge a clawed hand forwards intent on grabbing the pink one's neck. A sudden slam echoes around the room before a strong impact strikes you by the side and sends you through the air and into a wall. The metal exoskeleton stopped any pain or damage reaching you, harming your attacker more than you. Evidence of this being Filthy Rich, glaring at you aggressively whilst limping affected his hind legs. Standing up to your full height, you tip your head back and throw it forwards to release a sound so similar yet so different to the usual sound. Instead of being the regular sound, this one was somewhat slower with the deeper pitch resembling that of a jet engine. Spinning around, you make for the window and use your pneumatic mechanisms to throw yourself forwards in a slick pounce sending you though the window's glass and shattering the panes completely as you near the ground.
Rolling across the grass, you run in an effortless sprint across the fields of the town's outskirts before reaching your home. Slinking around your house, you enter through the backdoor and enter your basement hastily. Sliding all the individual components of the suit off, you arrange them on your workbench and step upstairs back into your living room before ascending to your vacant bedroom. You flop onto your bed and enter sleep, your body absolutely craving slumber after so much deprivation of it.
Seemingly as soon as you enter the realm of dreams, you're confronted by a familiar face.
"I think we need to speak, correct?" The lunar diarch asks, though rather rhetorically.
"No." You reply flatly, turning around and walking away.
Your soon held by an arcane blue aura, yanked backwards by an immense force. You're forcibly spun around so that your face is mere inches away from the blue fur of an enraged face. Her eyes almost completely white with only the slightest sliver of blue around pinpricked black pupils. Her eyes rapidly scan you.
"What's wrong with you?! We can forgive her for what she did, why can't you?!" She yells out strongly, tightening her grip on you.
Your blood runs cold in your veins, sound becomes dulled and distant like through a glass. The magical grip on you actually cracks before dispersing, the lunar diarch responsible for keeping it in check actually flinching before placing a hoof to head whilst wincing in pain. Your eyes stay fixed on the pained form of Luna, your fingers occasionally clenching into fists as you process what to do.
"Why would you need to forgive her for something which only affected me?" You ask quietly and coldly.
She freezes, still rubbing her head with one hoof whilst looking at you quizzically. She then sits back on her haunches and just watches you intently, her eyes squinted in concentration like she was trying to detect something. You cross your arms and close your eyes, opening them only to stare upwards at the plain black sky. Looking back down at the concentrating princess, you cough into your right fist to gain Luna's attention. You're successful.
"What?!" She snaps rudely.
"What are you doing?" You ask calmly.
"Trying to find the evil being possessing you. You would have DEFINATELY accepted her apology if you weren't being controlled." She replies smugly.
That's it. Not only does she have the gall to think that they needed to give forgiveness as well as you, despite them not being the ones almost slain and sent to a near eternity of mental agony, but now she thinks that because you don't want to forgive your would-be murder that you're not in control. Glaring down at her, you decide to show her how much control you really have. Cracking your knuckles, you put one hand behind your back which you ball into a solid fist. A sort of inky coldness smothers the forearm you're hiding, but you ignore it and swing the fist around from behind you. For a split second, you see the face of a suddenly distraught princess before her face snaps to the side from the force of the blow. A clinging, almost wet, sensation holding onto your forearm is almost overwhelming. You turn your attention from the now floored and crying princess to your right forearm.
A strange pitch black sludge roils around on your right forearm, waves in the mucky blackness rippling like dark organic tissue. The darkness drips lazily off your arm as it retreats from the limb in favour of dissipating before reaching the 'ground' of your dream. The speed of the sludge's retreat increases rapidly until it slips off in torrents, causing a pool to form as the dissipating takes too long to evaporate the sheer quantity of gloopy black. The blackness drips off to reveal an altered forearm, the limb no longer recognisable. The forearm resembles that of your suit, except with some plastic plates and fake grey fur, splattered in rotten matter and gory bodily fluids, attached to these randomly placed plates. The metal skeleton of the forearm is almost completely exposed, the metal and wiring even showing your bare arm within the cage of steel. The claw of the skeleton is even more exposed, no fur or plating concealing the mechanism for the retracting claws you had built into the suit during your second week-long self-induced solitude.
The princess, whilst rubbing her now bruised face, looks on in abject horror at your misshapen limb. Flexing your metal-bound fingers, the retractable claws slide forwards and elongate your fingers by a few inches with razor-like steel. Bearing your clawed hand, you advance towards the princess and grab her by the fur coating the back of her neck and lift her up into the air. She begins to sob softly as you use her as a punch bag, punching her with a metallic fist over and over whilst your regular arm keeps her held off the ground. Once the princess is left as a bruised mess held aloft by your unchanged left hand, you retract your misshapen fist and let it hang by your side. She looks up at you scornfully, hooves slowly edging from her eyes as she glares intently at you. You release your grip on her, causing her to quickly gravitate towards the floor. Before she makes impact, however, you deliver a mighty kick to her chin causing her to launch off into the 'sky'.
You hazily wake up, a quick glance at your right arm proving that your dream hadn't affected it within reality. Propping yourself up with your elbows, you grunt as you leave the comfort of your bed to dress yourself. Once dressed in a plain grey t-shirt, blue jeans and your usual black socks, you head downstairs and descend further into your basement. Yawning tiredly as you work, you use screws and a screwdriver to fix the ,now complete, plastic sheets and plates to the bare metal skeleton of the suit. The cool, somewhat reflective grey plastic is placed exclusively along the arms, legs and the back of the suit with some attached to the tail. The tip of the tail, the front of the torso and the lower jaw of the suit have plates of white plastic instead of grey plates, though they retain the plastic's universal cold and clean surface and smooth texture. Despite shielding the mechanisms and skeleton well, the suit still gives a robotic and unnatural impression.
Despite this, you think that the look is perfect for the task of swiping this diary your noble friends set you. In such a technologically backwards world like this, who would want to face a robot? Satisfied, you leave the suit limply sat in the corner of your basement, but you leave slightly unnerved. It's as if its eyes actually follow you, but you know that's impossible. How can an empty suit even watch? Despite your constant self-reassuring, you leave nervously watching over your shoulder at the slumped form, its eyes black from the lack of a user's eyes to reflect.
Closing the door of your basement rather hastily, you lock it before entering your living room. Sighing, you reach down and pick up a pair of randomly strewn leather, black shoes and slip them on. Falling into your armchair, you lift up one of the books on magical mechanisms and technomancy and begin to lazily read with one arm propped up on the armrest with the side of your chin resting on its knuckles. You remain seated in the dim light of the morning streaming through your windows, your eyes sometimes gazing out the windows at the passing clouds and distant activities in the town. After a couple hours, you'd finished the somewhat thinner book and you know have more knowledge on using crystals in mechanisms. Particularly in robotics.
Lifting yourself lazily from your chair, you yawn whilst removing your pet spider from your shoulder before setting the sleeping form into his crudely made house. Walking into your kitchen, you grab an apple out of your refrigerator and begin to chew on it absent-mindedly. Returning to your chair, you begin to drift off. Knowing that you should try and steal the diary at night, you know that sleeping away a few hours will do your sleep-deprived body some good as well as allowing you to wake up to start the theft. You immediately drift off into a dreamless sleep, vaguely wondering if the actions in your previous dream will even have repercussions.
Waking up hours later, you look up from your slumped form to the open curtains and spot the luminous pale moon hanging high in the sky, glittering stars surrounding the glowing satellite. Standing up, you run to our basement and fling open the door. Descending into the darkness, your fingers brush against the light switch, activating the dim lighting to illuminate the dingy room. The sight of your limp robotic suit makes the hairs running down your spine rise on edge, your legs feeling unusually like lead as you slowly descend the steps and traverse the stone floor. Reaching out, you nervously slip on each of the individual components of the suit, buckling them tightly to secure the suit to your body. Clicking the lower jaw around your own, you raise the upper part of the helmet above your head before drawing it onto your skull slowly. With a click, the mask's visuals activate and the suit gains full articulation.
You steps echo quietly like rapid whispers as you ascend the stairs, locking the basement as you exit. Swiftly walking through your living room, you exit out your backdoor and lock the door securely before making a move towards the train station. Thankfully, midnight train rides were a thing even in such a quiet and slow town like Ponyville. Thankfully, the only ponies nearby were those climbing into the train and a bored conductor. To be honest, you'd prefer a suit which could be transported in something inconspicuous like a briefcase, but this suit is too metallic to store easily, hence why the suit is always stored in a slumped over position. Crouching into a lower stance, you shift forwards and slip beneath the train.
From this position, hidden from anything's view, you retract the suit's claws and use them to hoist yourself up and hold onto the metal struts on the underbelly of one of the many train carriages. As the train's final whistle blows, the train begins to slow increase in speed as it moves down the track and out of the station. You draw yourself up more, adjusting yourself and forcing your arms among the struts. You do the same with your boots as you do with your arms, allowing you to draw closer to the carriage and remain more hidden from view. The ride is fairly boring, the suit allowing you to remain in the same position for nearly the entire ride, only moving if particular bumps in the track caused you to jolt. Once at the Canterlot City train station, you slip from the carriage and make for the alleyways. You sneak past some sort of vendor outside the station. Seeing the vendor selling confectionary, you swipe a bag of blueberry bon bons but you're almost caught by a lone patrolling guard.
"Hey!" You hear a voice yell out, rapid hoofsteps coming from behind you.
Without turning around, you sprint forwards and quickly begin to traverse the winding streets of the more slum-like regions. Hearing the echoing trots of a pony still following you, you resort to simply hiding in plain view. Quickly sliding into a nearby alleyway, you slump to the ground against the brick wall and go limp. You even close your eyes, turning the suit's fake eyes to appear as nothing but empty sockets. The bag of sweets sat beside you, your hand laying limply next to it. The clopping of hooves grows closer and closer, until you can see a thin shadow cast across the wall in front of you when you open your eyelids slightly. The sound of hooves grows quieter and quieter as the shadow moves at a gradually decreasing speed, the sound dominating the silence of the area being that of rapid and high-pitched panting. Curious, you open your eyes a slightly larger amount, just enough to take in your surroundings clearer and for your suit to not show your eyes.
The sight presented to you is that of a young pegasus foal, panting heavily and scanning the darkness of the alley. The foal, though seemingly brave and courageous, is visible torn between curiosity and fright. Moving forwards, the foal enters the alleyway and begins to search for signs of, most likely, you.
"H-hello?" Asks the foal in a noticeably female voice, the sound childish and younger than even Applejack's sister.
The filly, evident by the young female voice, spots the bag of confectionary next to you and gasps in excitement before moving towards it. Your lazily closed eyes trail the filly wherever she moves, only when she gets close do you shift your sight away. Because, as she draws close to the sugary food, a deep chuckle emanates from the alleyway's entrance. Your eyes sneakily shift towards a strange figure, though obviously pony in stature. The alleyway has a dead end composed of a brick wall, as the filly soon finds out as she backs up against it with a gasp when she sees the figure slowly stepping towards her. The figure's coat is a deep green, splattered in dirt and grime with a messy brown cloak and hood draped over the unwashed fur. The hood casts a shadow over the cruel visage of the figure, crooked yellowing teeth contorted into a wicked grin of dark glee. Prominent colours of black and purple appear beneath the fiends cruel red irises, the pupils pinpricked with madness. Greased strands of blonde hair drape down across the stallion's cunning eyes, the hair dying due to numerous diseases present within the stallion's blood.
The vile stallion makes slow deliberate steps towards the filly, like a cat who'd just trapped a mouse in its paws. A unicorn horn protrudes out of the stallion's hood, which soon glows an ethereal grey as a square of dirty rag floats out of the cloak worn by the stallion, dripping slightly with some nefarious liquid. The stallion, nor the filly, even acknowledge your presence, even as the stallion almost passes you. Before he can, however, a deep instinct flows from within you. Not only does the rather fatherly instinct surface, but also a very defensive and outraged one. As the stallion's hoof steps close to your right hand, you surge the hand forwards and grab him by the foreleg.
"What the bu- AGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!" He screams, both in pain and shock as your hand compresses suddenly around his foreleg, snapping the bone like cheap plastic.
With the stallion in your death-grip, you lift yourself to your full height and lift him too. You bring him to eye-level as the suit's fake blue eyes shift. The irises and whites seem to fade into darkness before your slowly constricting pupils brighten into a luminous pale white similar to that of a very distant moon in a starless sky. Your head randomly twitches as the suit's metallic mouth opens up and releases your, now trademark, screech. The stallion shakes in horror, slamming his still functioning leg into the robotic arm keeping him aloft. Using your spare hand, you begin to strike him with punch after punch. The stallion's head snaps back over and over as blood begins to trickle down his nose as his once green fur becomes dominated by deep purple bruises and randomly slashed claw marks. The stallion quickly falls into unconscious from the onslaught, his chest rising and falling rapidly as his heart still hammers in his rib cage. Raising his mouth to your funnel-like pointed ears, you listen to his breathing before being satisfied that he is definitely still alive. You pick up his discarded rag and force it against his snout before completely bandaging his face in his entire cloak to keep the rag in place. With one hand still holding him up, you use your free arm to open one of the many scattered trash cans and begin to stuff him inside. Once secure, you slam the lid down and tip the can so that the lid is pressed between the weight of the stallion and the cobbled floor.
Breathing heavily within the suit, which echoes around the alley as a sound like inhales and exhales against polystyrene, you close your eyes and relax. Your heart-rate slows to a relaxed pace, your eyes opening to reveal the usual fake reflection rather than your angered ones. Hearing quiet sobbing, you turn around and find the filly crumpled into a ball on the cold ground and shivering uncontrollably with her small furred hooves covering her eyes, tears streaming from them. You're saddened by the sight, your suit somehow reflecting this by drooping the fake eyelids slightly and turning your fake ears downwards. Turning to where you were slumped earlier, you spot the bag of confectionary and walk over to it. Grasping the red and white striped bag in the metal and plastic covered fingers composing the suit's right hand, you walk over to the crying foal.
It takes a couple of minutes for her to notice your presence, but she does so by freezing up and staring up at you with frightened and tearful purple eyes. With her attention gained, you hold out the bag of sweets to her. She scans between you and the bag nervously, hesitantly reaching out but swiftly bringing the bag to her unusually fluffy chest. Come to think of it, the light grey coat which covers her whole, undeniably small body is much more fluffy than any other foal you've seen. She keeps the bag held against her chest tightly as she looks up at you with more curiosity than fear. You rotate your head slightly with a motor-like sound, directing her attention back to the bag by pointing at it crudely. She takes your direction and nervously bites down on a single sweet, but soon begins to scoff them down like she was starving. The bag quickly draws void of its contents, the filly having eaten them all as quickly as possible. She hiccups loudly, looking up and giggling sheepishly. Reaching out, you pat her on the head and scratch her behind the ear. She laughs loudly, tapping the offending hand with grey, marshmallow-like, hooves.
Slumping to the ground in a cross-legged position, you place one of your mechanical hands to your plastic and metallic chest.
"What's your name?" You ask in a voice much like a distorted and altered version of your normal one, your voice being spoken normally causing the jaws of your mask to flop up and down in a comedic excuse for lip syncing, making you seem even more of a robot.
"I'm Twinkle, sir!" She squeaks happily.
"Well, Twinkle, what are you doing all the way out here?" You ask with your suit still flopping its metal and plastic jaws up and down haphazardly.
"I saw you and wanted to know what you was." She says, rubbing her right foreleg with her left one nervously.
"Miss Twinkle, I don't think running into this place after a stranger is a good idea, do you?" You ask with your hands on your hips like a scolding parent, though your voice is playful. "Anyway, don't you have someone to be with at this moment? May be someone you ran off from to follow me?" You ask inquisitively.
She gasps before sprinting towards the exit of the alleyway, turning around to face you before leaving completely.
"I almost forgot to ask, but what is your name, sir?" She asks sweetly.
Knowing that giving your real name is probably ill-advised if you want to keep this disguise even functional, you know that a new identity would be perfect. You don't want to waste the effort of making this thing. You look over your arms before craning your head over a nearby rain water puddle, studying yourself. A light bulb goes off in your head, causing you to turn to Twinkle with a smile hidden beneath the layers of metal and plastic.
"Harold the Husky, that is my name, miss!" You reply, Twinkle giggling at you when you find yourself in a saluting pose.
Twinkle soon turns around and continues to run, leaving your sight and leaving you alone in the alleyway. Scratching your plastic coated head with your robotic fingers, toying with the metallic canine ears attached to the suit's mask. You watch your ear spring back into place in the rain water puddle. Shrugging your shoulders, you rise from the ground and begin to wander quietly down the winding streets towards the looming palace above. You curse quietly as you somehow find yourself on the street literally running down the centre of the city, crowds of technicolour ponies shifting like an ocean of various paint. You find yourself on the opposite side of the road to a store called "Donut Joe's". For some convenient reason, a royal supply carriage for transporting food is parked outside the store with random pony guards walking over to the carriage at random intervals to deposit some cakes within. Somehow, you know exactly who all these cakes will be going to, but you just can't bring yourself to think of the evidence.
Once the opportunity arises, with no eyes watching, you slide across the road and into the carriage. Shifting through the boxes of sugary foods, you seat yourself at the back of the carriage and build a wall of boxes in front of you to block you from view. Once the carriage is filled with boxes, the carriage doors are slammed shut and, after a small delay, the carriage begins to slow move down the road and towards the palace of white and gold. The looming hour-glass towers of white marble and golden roofs are passed by the carriage as the rickety gold and purple pony-drawn vehicle enters the palace grounds. The near-violent shaking of the cart causes you to thrust your arms to the sides of the inside of the cart and grab the pained wood for support. The shaking continue until it comes to a sudden halt, the carriage doors being opened and some boxes being taken from within and carried away. Nervous, you let your arms go limp and you slump backwards into the shadows of the cart. You watch as the final boxes are taken out, the stallion chef looking up at you as he lifts the final box and almost drops it in surprise.
"Hey, Guard! Come check this out!" Shouts the stallion.
You keep your eyes squinted enough to stop the suit reflecting them. The guard looks at you and shrugs his shoulders at the chef.
"Maybe it's a delivery for somewhere else in the castle, or maybe it's for someone else?" The guard asks.
"Nevermind, just bring it into the kitchen. Will sort it out in the morning, no delivery carts past this time." The chef says with certainty.
Lifted from the cart with struggling grips, the chef and guard carry you inside and set you down. You're left slumped backwards against a cupboard with your head hanging downwards. The guard looks at your limp arms and decides that they're most likely a trip hazard in their current state, causing him to lift them up and set them in your lap. The doors of the kitchen are then closed as you're left alone, your head lifting up to scan the room. Lifting yourself into a crouched stance, you sneakily walk over to the door and open it slightly, peering around the door to scan the empty hallway of marble. You begin to sneakily wander down the marble hallways across the red carpet, sometimes looking out through the stained glass windows depicting past events. You stop next to an iron gate, a sign describing the room beyond as the Canterlot Royal Archives.
Grasping the gate's handle, you open the metal gate gently with a rusty creak whispering from the metal. Entering, you slink between bookshelves and wander down the alleyway-like layout of the room. A librarian and pair of guards almost catch you, but in the dim lighting you easily slump back into the shroud of the shadows. The further you go, the older the stonework becomes until you stare at an ebony gate with a pedestal a few metres beyond it. The sign describes the older chamber as being the restricted part of the archive, the pedestal beyond displaying Celestia's diary as possibly its centre-piece. Reaching forwards, you push open the gate and quickly dive forwards and swipe the journal. Spinning on your heels, you lunge forwards and slide the gate closed before making your way to the archive's exit. Once you sneak past any passers by, you close the gate behind you and slip out an open stained window. Falling from the great height, you slide retracted claws against the smooth marble as you slip down.
Dropping into some hedges, you begin to sprint away with the diary held tightly against your chest. A sudden weight causes you to fall to the ground. Rolling over, a bat-pony mare slams her silver armoured hoof directly into the muzzle of the suit, flinching back with a pained yelp as the shockwaves fire through her leg. Thrusting a metallic hand forwards, you grab her by the muzzle and slam her face into the dirt. Leaping upwards to stand, you hold her down as you retract your right-hand's claws. Dragging the claws softly across her shoulder, the mare's face removes itself from the dirt to look at you. With this success, you grab her by her now more exposed neck and slowly choke her into unconsciousness just enough to leave no marks behind. She flops forward in a deep sleep, leaving you to lift her up and walk over to a nearby bench and lay her across it like she fell asleep. Now, when she tries to perhaps say she saw a robot leaving the palace grounds, the evidence of it being a dream will be undeniable.
With your task almost complete, you make your way towards the task's giver, Fancy Pants. Once at his mansion, you scale all the way to his bedroom and sneak inside. You see a sleeping Fancy at his desk, a quill still in his hoof. Setting the diary on his desk in plain view, you scribble a message for Fancy Pants and leave it sat on the diary to confirm the task's success. After scaling your way out of his bedroom, you walk down every possible alleyway until you reach the train station. Contorting into your earlier position beneath the train, you depart back to Ponyville. After another eventless trip, you walk carelessly across the outskirt fields of Ponyville. Reaching home, you enter through the backdoor and lock it behind you. You sure can make some very secure magical doors, only needing your confirmation for the doors to lock or open. At least you can innovate with the resources available in this world, the ponies still use keys and those doors aren't very good at repelling an invasion by Earth Ponies. You tiredly slip out the suit and leave it slumped into the basement's corner before locking the door behind you, your sleepiness overriding any sense of unease caused by your suit. Having to literally crawl upstairs, to flop onto your bed and slip out of all of your clothes except your boxers. You quickly fall asleep, your highly active state earlier draining your reserves of energy.
Chapter: 12
Your eyes open slowly, your skull filled with a debilitating pain making you feel nauseas. You try and keep your eyes open, but your eyelids feel more heavy than they should, blocking your sight to be nothing but darkness. Peeling back your eyelids lazily, you see yourself sat in a wheelchair with straps holding your ankles and wrists. You sluggishly pull your arms upwards, but they remain tightly bound to the chair as you're carted down a dark hallway. The light of the hallway seems to strongly contrast with the thick plumes of shadow clinging to the edges of your sight. You stare down at your legs, them being wrapped up in a white gown with greyish spots forming a dotted pattern across the simple clothing.
The edges of your vision slowly redden into a crimson haze, the hallway twisting to become more sinister. The white walls become seemingly drenched in crimson ichor, the floor composed of nothing but bloody limbs and organs, writhing with life. The sound of a heart beating is all you can hear, the pumping sound synchronising with the pulsing of the hallway around you. You begin to thrash your pain-ridden body around in your confines, the leather straps holding you seeming to grow tighter and tighter.
The hallway seems to become ever longer as the speed of the cart picks up, the sound of screeching wheels like the shrill cries of souls damned for eternity. A doorway snaps into existence at the end of the hallway, which begins to rapidly speed towards your restrained form. Its doors slam open loudly against the walls to either side, the empty void left behind filled with nothing but darkness. Sensing your approaching presence, a mouth pierces the darkness lined with spear-like fangs which snap open as you get closer. You scream through the leather wrapped around your mouth as you're roughly shoved through the hellish doorway.
And, as suddenly as it began, it stops. Silence surrounds you, as does darkness. Your heart pounding speedily in your chest, you open your eyes whilst gasping for breath. You find yourself back in your bedroom, alone. No sight of the previous fray meets you, just cold silence and the pitch-black darkness. You wipe the back of your shivering hand against your forehead, grimacing as you feel the sweat be rubbed away by the movement. Your eyes move from left to right, scanning your room for any nightmares which may be awaiting you. Still shaking from the nightmare, you cautiously slide your legs over the side of your bed, and gradually stand on quaking legs.
You hold your aching head with one hand whilst feeling the wall for the light switch. Though the pony race is still somewhat primitive in comparison to your own, they still have managed some similar technological advances. Though, in their own whimsical way. The light switch is to activate a magic powered light bulb rather than the electricity powered ones of your own world. You eventually brush your fingers across the familiar piece of plastic, swiftly flicking your finger along it to turn it into the active position. The light above flickers before remaining in a fixed position of granting dim light to the once pitch-black room.
The room seems exactly how you left it, no sign of any nightmares lurking in the shadows. On quivering legs, you walk out of the room and head downstairs, your heart furiously beating in fear. You sit yourself down in your armchair, and close your eyes to try and calm your heartbeat. You run your shaking hands through your slick black hair, greasy from your unrest. Your breathing grows slower and slower, your heart rate reducing down to a manageable rhythm. Once you've brought yourself back from terror, you stand up on more sturdy legs.
Thinking that a walk is what you need to clear your head, you grab some clothes and coat to go outside so that the dawn air can ease your mind. You swiftly sprint upstairs and grab some plain black trousers and a white shirt. Needing something to walk in, you grab your usual black shoes and to keep the dawn's chill of you, you grab your black trench-coat from the coat rack by the door. Locking the door behind you, you step out into the land in the early hours of the day.
Looking up into the air, from your position out in Ponyville's outskirts you can gaze out at the city of Canterlot perched on the mountain side. You can even see one or two lights from the mountain-city, though their source is unknown to you. Looking down, you breathe in deeply before setting out in your aimless wander. The village is still sleeping, as the streets are bare and devoid of any of the life and busy sounds which will occur later in the day. Without any sound, you can think more clearly as you walk. You keep your head down as you walk, barely thinking whenever avoiding a sudden dip in the path. You don't even need to think about where you're going, you just allow yourself to be lost in your thoughts. You don't even notice where you are before coming out of your thoughts at the edge of the local, and feared, forest. The Everfree is just before you, but you are uncertain why you have even came this far towards it.
Then you realise something. Someone, or something, is guiding you to this forest. Despite your personal fears about what the forest may contain, you enter the forest without even looking back. You feel the eyes of predators and prey alike watching your movements, but no life dares approach you. You don't understand why, but it's like they can smell something off about you. That's when you feel something moving closer to you, running through the foliage and straight towards you. Backing up, you twist on your heels and begin pounding the ground with your steps as you bound through the forest in a sprint.
You fly through the air and into a tree's trunk as something slams a hard appendage into you, sending you rocketing through the air. You moan as you slide to the ground, holding the side of your skull as the world begins to spin before coming into focus. A black blur then slams into you, pinning you into the tree's bark. Your eyes try to shut as a fierce pressure is forced onto your throat, making your vision even more blurred than it already was. Then your vision begins to darken, as the sound of laughter fills your ears. You can feel the presence of multiple beings around you as one chokes you with its powerful hooves.
Without hearing their words, you know that the intent here is to end your life early. Your blood suddenly begins to boil, your rage bubbling within your veins. Your vision of the world begins to distort, turning from blurry to black and white as the light hitting your eyes becomes too bright to bare. You begin swinging your head around as the light begins to cause your eyes to feel like they are on fire, a burning pain filling you from within. You feel like fire has consumed your whole body, fiery pain lancing through every nerve of your body. Needing anything, anything at all, to cool the burning sensation, you look through your black and white sight at the blurry shape before you. The pressure on your throat feels so distant you aren't even sure it's there. But you know it should be, because you see short furry limbs pushing into your neck.
Your rage boils over within you, a sickening crunch sound filling your ears as darkness consumes your sight. At first, you think your neck has been broken before you open your eyes. You had closed them voluntarily. You can feel a sort of wetness running down your chin and slithering up your nose slightly, another feeling of fur against your mouth makes you gag as a hair enters your mouth. Pulling back, your vision has become consumed by redness around the edges, with only darkness being in the centre alongside red outlines of objects and living ponies stood around you. You feel the limbs around your neck have gone limp, making you look down curiously.
In your sudden rush, you now know that you had involuntarily bitten into the highly soft flesh of the pony's neck in front of you, with so much force that you'd snapped the neck as you grabbed your own arms around its neck. The corpse flops back and falls to the ground limply, leaving you and your violent company in disbelief. Then, they start moving towards you as your pupils dilate even further...
