Chapter 1
Pain, Pain, he hurt everywhere, it wasn't a blinding mind numbing pain, and it was more like that dull throb and ache you get when you work every part of your body and then crash and can't move. What
was that sound? Was somepony crying? Slowly the young colt opened his eyes and looked up.
Sunlight shone down on him through a large hole in the ceiling, standing over him was a large white mare with a strange rainbow mane that blew in a nonexistent wind, a golden tiara rested on
her head behind her horn.
“Whaa...?” he muttered intelligibility.
“Shh, shh, everything will okay,” she whispered as she pulled him close and hugged him, making him feel warm and filling an empty spot in his chest he hadn't even realized was there.
His name was Sketch Mcdoodle Book, Sketch for short. He was a gray colored unicorn with a messy brown mane and tail, his forest green eyes and blank flank completed the picture of the small
colt that was currently walking through the royal palace beside Princess Celestia while trying to both look very small and unnoticeable and also trying to look at everything without looking like it.
Of course he was failing at the latter.
“And this will be your room,” Celestia said as she opened a door and let sketch inside.
The room was rather nondescript, or about as nondescript as a guest room in the Royal Palace could get. Princess Celestia looked down at the young colt waiting for a reaction of some kind,
when none came she tried to prompt one.
“Well, what do you think?” she asked. Sketch jumped slightly and looked at her then back to the room.
“It...It’s great,” he said with all the enthusiasm of a rock.
Internally Celestia sighed, there was a good chance Sketch would be staying in the castle of a while so she could keep an eye on him, she already had to deal with Twilight Sparkles Anti-social
behaviors, favorite student she maybe but there was more to life than studying.
Of course Sketch's introvertness wasn't a natural thing nor was it due to being a workaholic.
Several months ago there had been several reports of colts and fillies going missing, some had been orphans but most had been foalnapped from loving families. The authorities had been unable to
find the culprit for a long time the only real lead they had was that all of the foals captured were unicorns. That was until two days ago.
Celestia had sensed the huge magical surge before she saw it, and it was rather hard to miss the large red pillar of energy shooting up into the sky, true she couldn't see where it had originated from as it was somewhat far away, though she was able to determine that it came from the EverFree forest, never a good sign.
She quickly gathered her guards, checked to make sure Discord hadn't escaped due to the influx of magic, left a note for Twilight telling her today's lesson was canceled and went to investigate.
It turned out that the location of the blast was none other than the secret base of De-von Danger, one of the more dangerous criminals in Equestria, he had several times attempted to over throw
her rule and ever time had been dealt a defeat at her hooves. It turned out that De-von was the culprit behind the foalnapping, keeping his young captives in cages whilst performing twisted magical
experiments on them. She and her guards encountered minimal resistance from De-von's flunkies which had confused her at first; De-von had never been this sloppy, until she found De-von himself.
Or what was left of him anyway.
When they had finally found the source of the blast, a rather large hole that had punched through five floors, the room looked to be a twisted mix of a torture chamber and a laboratory. And there, lying in the center of a crater, lay Sketch, the hindquarters of De-von (recognizable only by his cutie mark) lying at the edge.
From there it hadn’t taken long to deduce what had happen, from De-von’s own notes she discovered that he’d been attempting to create an army of super powerful unicorns by infusing them with Chaos magic. He had so far been unsuccessful as his notes showed his increasing frustration at the lack of results.
It seemed that attempting to place the Chaos magic inside a fully grown pony was ineffective as their magic had already matured and rejected the magic immediately. He’d then switched to foals and had only slight success as, while the young ones did manage to become infused with the Chaos magic they had no way of controlling it as the energy actually tore their bodies the shreds.
It was actually pretty lucky that De-von was not only dead but that there wasn’t enough of him left to try and revive so that Celestia could personally send him to the deepest bowls of Tartarus after making him mentally experience ever pain he had inflicted on those poor foals.
At first she had assumed that Sketch had perished as well due to lack of energy, (that blast was rather large after all, it had pierce the heavens!) but while she was mourning over his body the small twitch and signs of life that had suddenly come from him had made her swear that whatever else this foal would have her protection to repay failing him and all the others.
Then of course came a few problems, first was where he was to be placed, it seemed that his parents had been killed during the initial foalnapping trying to save him and his only known relatives,
Delia Do and her daughter Derpy, were both Pegasus living in Cloudsdale. Second, was that it seemed that De-von’s last experiment had been an actual success!
When Celestia had been checking over Sketch’s vitals and magical energies she had been shocked to find that in addition to his pool of natural Unicorn magic he also had an overlapping pool of Chaos magic inside of him, churning and mixing with his normal magic yet staying separate at the same time.
She was unsure of what to make of this, after observing the colt she had determined that the Chaos magic did not seem to be having any sort of effect on him mentally. Had Celestia had access to
the Elements of Harmony she might have tried to remove the energy from him before it became too twisted up in his normal magic but that was not presently an option, the Elements could only rarely be used by only one pony as they were meant to be used by friends defending something and each had to actually represent an element.
She had brought him to Canterlot as he had nowhere else to go (and there was no way she was going to put him in an orphanage) and she wanted to keep a close eye on him in case the Chaos magic began to act up, it would be easier to see a change in his behavior if she was seeing him often.
Still it unnerved her at how quiet he was, at six most colts and fillies could barely sit still due to an endless amount of energy, yet here was a colt that had enough energy inside of him to match Twilight’s natural magical energy, acting quiet and polite.
This was perhaps the most difficult problem.
When questioned about his family Sketch was slow to answer and vague with them when he did as though he wasn’t even sure of them himself. After giving him a mental evaluation Celestia was informed that he was suffering from a type of amnesia brought on by the trauma he had experienced. He remembered his life before waking up in that crater like it was a story that someone else had told him about.
“Princess?” Sketch asked snapping Celestia out of her thoughts.
“Yes Sketch?” she asked in return, smiling down at him.
“Um how long am I gonna be here?” he asked nervously, looking at the ground. “I don’t wanna be a burden on ya.”
Celestia stared down at him, it took all of her will power not to let her jaw drop, and she silently began to wonder if the young colt’s biological parents might have something to do with his quiet attitude. Slowly she kneeled down in front of him and pulled him into a hug, wrapping her wings around him.
“You will never be a burden Sketch, never.”
Twilight looked at Sketch.
Sketch looked at Twilight.
They both turned to look up at Celestia who smiled down at them.
“Twilight this is Sketch he will be staying in Canterlot for a while I’d like you to keep an eye on him if you could,” she received a hesitant nod from Twilight.
“Sketch this is Twilight Sparkle, my apprentice and student, she will be in charge when I am not around okay?” she asked Sketch who nodded and looked at Twilight.
The pair stared at each other then back to Celestia, who mentally groaned at the two.
“Well say hello,” she prompted.
“Hello,” Sketch said opting to look at the floor instead
of Twilight.
“Hello,” she said back whilst looking at the wall behind him.
Celestia sighed, well it was a start, weren't anti-socials supposed to be attracted to each other’s personalities or something?
“Well I have to go take care of something’s, Twilight we'll be having our lesson at the usual time, Sketch I'll see you tonight,” she said before leaving her two subjects.
There was a LONG awkward silence as they both looked at each other for a moment before turning and walking to different parts of the Canterlot Library. Twilight going to study from her book on Temporal magical theory as Sketch went off to the fiction section, eyes squinted as he looked for the book he wanted, he smiled slightly when he spotted it but frowned when he realized that the copy of
Daring Do and the Temple of Discord was on one of the upper selves of the bookcase.
Squinting his eyes in concentration he willed his magic to pull the book down from the bookcase, a red glow appeared around his horn but only a faint shimmer appeared around the book in question. It
shook briefly as Sketch struggled to pull it out but try as he might the dang book wouldn't move! Growing frustrated he began to focus extremely hard, imagining that the book simply removed itself and floated down to him. The book shook for a second as the glow around it brightened and slowly ever so slowly moved.
Halfway out.
Groaning, he tried again but no matter how hard he tried he couldn't get the book out!
Sighing in defeat he trotted over to where Twilight was sitting and stood there for a moment awkwardly. Glancing up he marveled slightly at the fact that she not only was holding up two books at the same time but also using her magic to write down her findings on a piece of parchment. He looked back at the book then to her and sighed again in defeat.
“Can you help me?” he asked Twilight, looking at the ground.
“What?” Twilight asked pausing in her studies and looking over at him confused.
“Can you help me get the book down?” he asked again gesturing towards the book in question.
Twilight looked over where Sketch had been standing and saw the book in question hanging halfway out of the bookcase. She looked back at Sketch in surprise and pity, she of course could get it
no problem having been Celestia's student for a year had done wonders for her control and magical abilities. She briefly wondered again why Celestia had even brought this colt here if not to be another student, which he apparently wasn't if he couldn't even levitate a book.
Sighing she knew she was getting slightly possessive of her mentor with that last thought, the colt wasn't even trying to get a book on magic and seemed depressed enough as it was. Focusing she easily pulled the book from the self and dropped it on the table in front of Sketch.
“Thank you,” he muttered and to Twilight's surprise the book began to glow red as he lifted it up off the table and began to read.
“Control issues?” she asked already expecting the answer.
Sketch nodded silently, and continued reading. Twilight watched him for a moment before shrugging and returning to her own studies.
–
Two months had passed since Twilight and Sketch had first met, nopony who saw them would call them friends, you also couldn't call them enemies since they never fought, actually they both kept pretty much to themselves whenever they were together. Of course this is if you ever asked anypony who simply worked or lived in the castle, if you were to ask Twilight or Sketch if they knew each other they would likely say yes and move on.
What they didn't say is that slowly over the two months they had known each other Sketch had begun to see Twilight in much the same way that she herself saw Cadence, as a surrogate big sister and
Twilight in turn had begun to care for Sketch in much the same way. This isn't to say that their relationship was exactly like how Twilight's and Cadence's was but it was close. Mostly the two would sit in the Canterlot Library reading or working on whatever project they were doing, with Sketch occasionally asking a question of Twilight.
Thus came about the current scene.
“How do you do it?”
“How do I do what?” Twilight asked back, turning away from her studies to look at Sketch.
“Levitation, how are you so good at it?” he asked.
“What are you talking about you're just as good at it as I am,” Twilight deflected.
Sketch just gave her a deadpanned look and gestured to the four books currently being held in the air by Twilight’s magic.
“Ah well, um..” Twilight said blushing.
“Tell me!”
“Okay, okay,” she said thinking hard how to explain it.
“Okay, so what I do is I picture my magic reaching out and grabbing whatever it is that I want and it just happens,” Twilight explained.
Sketch frowned slightly at Twilight's explanation, it sounded a little too easy. He sighed, it was worth trying though. He turned over to the small book fort he had constructed earlier, (Celestia having called on her Niece Cadence to watch him when neither she nor Twilight could and dangit he didn't care how 'cute' he was he was not going to be tickled or treated like a foal!) to protect himself.
Looking at one of the books that lay near it he took a deep breath and began to imagine his magic reaching out from his horn and grabbing hold of it. Suddenly as his horn began to glow red a beam
of red energy shot out from his horn, the end of it forming into a hand with 4 fingers which grabbed the book and held it in mid-air.
Both Twilight and Sketch felt their jaws drop at this different show of magic. Slowly Sketch imagined retracting the book towards him and the hand began to retract until it was merely a few inches away from his face. He immediately dropped the book and tried it again with another, and another, slowly deconstructing his book fort as he began to pull more than one book down at a time.
Later when Celestia came to collect Twilight from the library for their lesson she had to hide her amusement as she watched her two charges competed to see whose type of magic could hold more
books up in the air. Twilight won but that’s beside the point.
–
Cadence looked down at the two foals she was currently foal sitting, Twilight and Sketch. Technically she wasn't foalsitting Twilight as she was old enough not to need a foalsitter to keep an eye
on her, she also was a workaholic enough that really no one did except to let her know to take a break, but she had been in the library with Sketch when she had come to watch him for her aunt and had been
thrilled to see her favorite little filly again.
Sketch of course upon seeing her had grabbed as many of the books he could and began to construct a book fort to defend himself from 'the evil pink tickle monster'. The ensuing battle had them all laughing. Then Cadence had brought out of her saddle bags some art books for Sketch to draw in, as she had learned that he greatly enjoyed drawing, Twilight had joined in as well and she was now looking at the results.
Floating in their magic were their pictures of 'their favorite pony ever,' Aunt Celestia.
As she looked down at the two's drawings she was impressed at Sketch's Drawing, it wasn't anything you'd hang in a fancy gallery but considering his age and the fact she knew several ponies much older who couldn't have drawn this well it was still a sight. Twilight’s was quite a sight as well but for the opposite reason.
“They’re both wonderful,” she half-lied.
–
Celestia looked down at Sketch, who was uncomfortably shuffling his hooves and not looking at her. Cadence had insisted that she have the colt show her his drawing of her and now she saw why, he
had true potential as an artist especially if the ever increasing number of notebooks he was getting were filled with pictures of this quality.
“This is wonderful Sketch,” she said smiling as she floated the paper back over to his small desk. The smile he gave her was almost brighter than the sun.
“Now then, there is some things we need to address,” she said causing sketch's smile to falter.
'I really hope this isn't about the smoothie incident,' he thought nervously.
“First this is not about the smoothie incident,” she said getting a sigh of relief from Sketch. “It is about where you will be living from now on.”
This made Sketch freeze and stare at her in shock and more than a little hurt.
“As you know you've been living here for a little over three months while we tried to find a place for you to live, as your aunt and cousin cannot take care of you while they are in Cloudsdale, in any case we have found a mare who is willing to become your official guardian and whom you will be staying with,” she explained and almost couldn't hide wincing as Sketch's expression dropped even further. He looked like he had just been told that Santa Clause wasn't real and then seen an adorable kitten get shot.
“Oh,” was all he could muster.
“Yes, please gather your things and I will teleport you to your new home,” Celestia said.
Glumly and trying to hold back tears Sketch began to gather up what few things in the room he could call his, namely his sketchbooks and a few art supplies, everything else was to stay in the room where he'd found it. As he gathered everything up he couldn't stop the feelings of hurt and abandonment that he was feeling, he had grown so used to the castle, it had become his home and now he was
having to leave it.
Slowly he turned and stood before Celestia, refusing to look at her. It would only hurt more.
“Can..... can I say goodbye to... to Twilight and Cadence?” he asked a little hopefully, still not looking at her.
“I'm sorry Sketch but there is no time, we must get you to your new home before I have to lower the sun and raise the moon,” Celestia said, this time she couldn't hide the wince that came when she saw spots appearing on the carpet from where Sketch's tears were hitting.
“O-okay then I-I'm ready,” he stuttered still fighting tears.
“Celestia's horn glowed and the both of them disappeared in a flash of-
“Um Princess, we didn't go anywhere,” Sketch said cutting the author off as he looked around the room they were in.
“Ah Contrar, we went exactly one floor up to the permanent living quarters, after all we can't have you living in the guest bedroom of your own home can we?” she asked smiling down at Sketch who had a dumbstruck look on his face.
“Bu-wha-who-huh?!” he spluttered incoherently as his mind tried to process what she had said. While he did this Celestia floated a piece of paper of the bed and began to read.
“This paper declares that I Princess Celestia Ruler of Equestria am the proper guardian of one Sketch McDoodle Book, and as such shall look after him until such time as he is able to do so himself,” she proudly declared.
Right before she was knocked on her flank as Sketch gave her a flying glomp.
“Oh thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,” he cried as he hugged her.
“Oh you're welcome Sketch,” she laughed, nuzzling him. “Now do you want me to tell you about your other surprise now or later?”
“THERE'S MORE?!” Sketch cried.
“MhM,” Celestia said smiling”
“Oh, Tell me, tell me, tell me, is it a party? Or something super important? Will there be cake?” he asked in rapid response.
“Well I suppose we can have cake,” Celestia said winking at him conspiratorially.
“What is it?” he asked excitability.
“I have decided to enroll you in my school for gifted unicorns, provided you can pass the exa-”
Sketch would later deny the high pitch squeal of excitement that erupted out of his mouth as he told Celestia that she was the BEST pony ever.
“This is the best day of my life!” he cheered.
–
'This is the worst day of my life,' Sketch thought miserably as he made an effort to avoid seeing the disapproving stare his surrogate mother was giving him.
“Sketch McDoodle Book, look at me,” Celestia said in that authoritative voice that told Sketch 'you-will-do-what-I-tell-you-or-you-are-going-to-be-in-worse-trouble-than-you-are-now'. She had only used the voice twice before to him (once after he'd pranked his cousin Prince Blueblood, and the other when he and a colt he later learned was Twilight's older brother had gotten into a fight, oddly enough Shining Armor had warmed up to him considerably after that,) and every time it had made him feel horrible and want hide in a dark hole.
Still however much he didn't want to, Sketch slowly raised his head and met Celestia's gaze for the briefest of seconds before turning away guiltily.
“What happened?” she asked sternly.
“I-I just don't know,” he said in all honesty.
It had been a month since Sketch had managed to pass the entrance exam to get into Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, after a month long cramming session with Twilight and Cadance helping him
get ready. He'd been very disappointed to discover that he couldn't make the dragon egg hatch like Twilight had, or he had been until the examiners told him that the egg was actually a rock meant to look like an egg and they had just wanted to see how creative he could be in trying to hatch it.
Turns out that they never actually expected a pony to hatch the egg that the dragons had given Celestia, or at least not to pass their entrance exam, some ponies did acquire a dragon egg and hatch it for their final exam but that had fallen out of practice slightly. Since they didn't have another egg they had just decided to use a rock in its place.
Sketch had at first been disappointed that he wouldn't get a cool dragon pet like Twilight did but Celestia assured him that if he really wanted one she would arrange for it when he was older, which had cheered him up immensely and Twilight said he could help her take care of Spike.
At first it had seemed like a dream come true, sure he hadn't yet gained his cutie mark in anything and he had, had to sacrifice a lot of the time he spent drawing studying with Twilight but still! Celestia had even given him the go ahead to call her mom, after a few slips when he'd called her that much to her surprise. To be fair his biological mother hadn't really been the mothering type, and his father had looked down on anything he saw as a weakness, not to say they didn't love their son but they had, had expectations for what he should do in life.
Celestia had, had no expectations and had simply wanted Sketch to do the best he could in whatever he chose. Everything had been great!
Except for uh one thing.
Magic Kindergarten.
Now it wasn't that Sketch was having any problems with the course work, far from it, but it was more the students that were the problem. To make things clear for all the readers Celestia's School was the best place for a Unicorn to learn, however like every such private school it requires that the parents have enough money to enroll their child into it, and considering the school was located in Canterlot where many nobles lived their children tended to be spoiled brats much like Diamond Tiara.
And of course each and every one of them had already found their super-special talent and had earned their cutie mark.
Can you see where this is going?
Many of Sketch's classmates had liked to taunt him with the fact that he had yet to gain his cutie mark, claiming that he shouldn't even be allowed in school without one. Didn't matter that in practical application of magic he could school them (thanks to Twilight's tutoring) every way and Sunday, they had their noses stuck so far up that is was amazing that they could see where they were going and not run into things.
Most had called him 'blank flank', and 'princesses pet', his only real friend outside of Twilight (not counting Celestia who was his mother and Cadence who was technically his cousin) was a red eyed, blue maned, white coated mare named Vinyl Scratch.
Vicenza or Vinyl as he called her, was awesome in his opinion. She never called him blank flank, or made fun of him. The other foals didn't socialize with her too much since her eyes seemed to freak them
out. Sketch thought they were pretty cool. Even her parents were awesome, Sketch had met them one day when they came to pick Vinyl up and Mom had been running late (something to do with his uncle Lord Blueblood making his usual stink), and had offered to walk him home.
All three of their jaws dropped when he walked up to the palace gate, greeted the guard pony by name and had waved bye as he walked through the open gate.
Vinyl had nearly rung his neck the next day.
But today had been..... bad.
While most of the class had stopped bugging him after two weeks (and a few threats from Vinyl), the class bullies had kept it up. Sketch honestly wondered how those three idiots had even gotten accepted in, (he and Vinyl figured that it had something to do with their parents). It had started with the usual insults, which he had learned to ignore and kept working on his art project next to Vinyl, which was a picture of him and Celestia, when one of them had grabbed his art book from his desk with magic.
Vinyl who was closer too them turned and tried to grab it back only for one of the leaders goons to smack her aside while the leader ripped Sketch's project and art book to shreds.
And then the world went red.
When Sketch woke up the classroom looked like a twister had come through, tables were overthrown, textbooks, papers and other school supplies had been scattered around the room. HIs three antagonizers had been thrown against the far wall and were staring at him in fear, bruises covering their small bodies. All his other classmates had fled except for Vinyl who was staring blankly at him from the wall to his right.
And standing right in front of him, horn glowing, with cold, but fear filled eyes was Celestia, somehow in that moment he knew that what had just happened was all his fault and that he was in a lot of trouble.
They'd sent the three colts and Vinyl to the nurse’s office before Celestia had teleported them home bringing Sketch back to the present.
"Sketch," said colt flinched as Celestia said his name, but slowly raised his head and looked at her.
"Do you remember anything at all?" she asked calmly
"They- they were making fun of me and -and they took my art b-book and ripped it a-and t-t-they hurt Vinyl a-and I was s-so mad a-and then everything went red and..." Sketch slowly dissolved into tears.
This was it, this was worse than the smoothie incident, than the Blueblood incident, or even when he'd gotten in that fight with Shining Armor. He was going to get kicked out, or thrown in the dungeon, or, or something! There was no way he wasn't going to be punished for this, he'd destroyed a classroom, and hurt three colts in the process for mom's-sake!
Sketch's vision turned blurry as tears began to fill his eyes and run down his snout, he bit his lip to try and keep quiet but could feel himself shaking. Suddenly Sketch's downward mental spiral came to a screeching halt as he felt somepony pull him close. Blinking away his tears he looked up to see Celestia above him, eyes filled with concern.
“Shh, shh, it’s okay Sketch, I’m not angry and I don’t blame you for what happened.”
“But-but I hurt them, and…” Sketch stuttered out.
Celestia sighed, and pulled back to look at Sketch.
“Sketch, there’s something…… I need to tell you, something I should have explained but felt that you should be spared knowing.”
“What is it?”
“Come with me this may take a while,” Celestia lifted him up and carried him out.
“It has to do with De-von.”
Author's Note
Well here it is the first chapter, please leave a comment and rate it.
Criticism welcome, within reason of course.
