My Little Pony: Friendship is Incarceration

"Hey, Twilight. What are ya'll doin, sleepin' in the sun like that?" Applejack asked, and Twilight jerked her head up and blinked in shock, regarding each of her friends spread out around her. The blanket spread out on the grass was the softest wool she'd ever felt, the pastries from sugarcube corner laying sweet and delectable on their trays. Droplets of condensation crept slowly along the bottles of chilled apple juice. Beside her, Applejack gave her a nudge. "Ya'll tryin' ta get yerself a nasty sunburn?"

"Here, darling," Rarity said gaily, levitating over a sun hat and settling it on Twilight head. "You can have my spare."

"You carry a spare sun hat?" Rainbow asked, then snorted and rolled her eyes. "What am I saying? Of course you do."

"Scoff now if you wish, but we'll see who's coat is all faded and wrinkly in twenty years," Rarity sniffed from her picnic divan.

"Thanks, girls. I was just having their terrible nightmare," she said as she rubbed the back of her head. "I was in this horrible dungeon. It was terrible."

"Oh, my goodness! That sounds terrible!" Fluttershy gasped, hugging Angelbunny to her chest and keeping him from reaching a plate of carrot cake cupcakes. Twilight could smell the cinnamon and ginger.

"Well, of course, silly," Pinkie Pie said. "That's why they're called dungeons and not fungeons!" Then her eyes popped wide. "Ooooh! I could totally make one though. It'd have rides and games and party balloons and it'd be so great no one would ever want to escape!"

"Kinda sure that's not the point of a dungeon," Applejack said with an easy smile.

"Does Equestria even have a dungeon? I mean, I suppose it must, somewhere," Rarity asked with a frown.

Twilight stared straight ahead, hearing the rumble of lightning in the distance. Her mouth was suddenly dry, and she wanted to say anything but what she did. "Yes. It does. Blackhorn Prison."

"Oh, my. That sounds like a terrible place," Fluttershy shivered as Angel Bunny slumped in her grasp, a cold wind blowing through the picnic.

"Yes. It is," Twilight rasped, unable to stop herself from answering.

"Well, don't worry, Twilight. We'd never leave our best friend stuck in some dirty, dark dungeon," Rainbow Dash said brightly. "We'd come and break you our in ten seconds flat."

"Oh, absolutely," Rarity agreed, nodding. From far away, she could hear screaming.

"Easy peasy!" Pinkie Pie said, holding up a cake with a file baked in, the ends pokeing out through the frosting.

Fluttershy nodded as the cold wind blew the bottles over and rolled the treats away.

"Unless..." Applejack said as her smile disappeared as she stared right into Twilight's eyes. "Ya'll deserve ta be there."

The storm clouds rumbled as Rarity laughed coldly, proclaiming, "Oh yes! In that case you should just rot."

Pinkie leaned in and hissed in Twilight's face, "Forever!"

"Please! Don't!" Twilight said as she leaned away. "I didn't know! I didn't think-"

"Think this!" Applejack snapped. Then she reared back her hooves and brought both hooves down in a crushing blow as her friends looked on.

The blow made Twilight flail her hooves wildly as she became aware of hooves booming in the cell block. Twilight hyperventilated as stared at the black unicorn looking down at her. "You're about to miss chow. Again. Come on, Egghead," she said as she backed away from the bunk bed and let her climb down.

"Sorry, Fifty," Twilight answered. Egghead was the nickname that Fifty had given her. No pony here used their real name. Her official name was TS0248, which was how the guards addressed her. Using your real name could make you a hell of a target. Your family could be blackmailed. 'Insurance' it was called. Or worse. She had a brother in the royal guard and had been the student of Princess Celestia, the Person who had sentanced each prisoner here.

No. Ponies knowing she was Twilight Sparkle would be a bad, bad thing.

Names were the first thing Fifty had taught her that first day, where she'd spent every minute no more than three feet from Fifty's side at all times, and most of that was in their cell. You never asked for names. You asked people what they were called. Asking for names marked her as new. New marked her as vulnerable. There were plenty of ponies here who excelled at using and abusing the vulnerable.

Fifty had also introduced her to her herd. They were twenty or so unicorns in the pink cell block, and they hung together. They showered together. They went to chow together. You respected your herd and they respected you; that was how it was supposed to go. You didn't punk your herd. You didn't fuck with your herd. And right now, her herd was going to chow. She did not want to be left behind.

Bad things happened to ponies here on their own.

So it didn't matter if she was tired, disoriented and upset from that dream. If her herd was going, she went. Fifty wandered to the front. Twilight was bringing up the rear. It was the only time they were ever separated by more than a body length; Fifty was important in the herd, and Twilight wasn't.

They also weren't the only herd here. The earth ponies had two, each one larger than the unicorns. One was devoted to city ponies, the other to rural. The pegasi were the smallest herd, and moved in tight formations on the ground that would have impressed Rainbow Dash. They always tried to be first. first in the showers. First out. First to chow. First done. Then the city ponies. Then unicorns. Then the 'hillponies' bringing up the rear. Woe to any of the other herds that were caught by them. Then the roadapples... ponies with no herd. The wretched. The outcast.

"Sleep Bad?" A light blue mare with a darker mane asked beside her. 'Lullaby' she was called.

"Yeah," Twilight answered.

"Well, you'll get used to it. I was a mess my first week," she said with a smile and Twilight returned it.

"Egghead. Button it," Fifty snapped. "Watch your look." Then she said "Lullaby." That was all she had to say. The blue mare stiffened and stared straight ahead as she walked.

Your look. Fifty hadn't let her out of her cell before she'd told her about the look. Where your eyes went mattered. Where your eyes went could get you beaten, killed, or worse. If your eyes went down, prepare to be a trick pony, because that is what you would become. If you looked at someone for too long, it was a challenge or an offer for sex. Powerful ponies got to look at you. But you couldn't just close your eyes either, so you simply gazed straight ahead with the most bored expression you could manage. If someone looked at you, you just gazed at something right behind their head. The divider between the first and second floor of the cell block was a popular target.

"How's Egghead coming?" A rose colored unicorn with similarly blunted horn asked as she walked next to Fifty. Mother hadn't spoken to Twilight yet. Twilight wasn't worth talking to. She lead their herd with regality that would do Celestia proud.

Fifty glanced back at Twilight. "She's smart. Name fits like a horseshoe. She's also an idiot with her questions. We'll see which is stronger," Fifty said casually as they followed the City Slickers out.

Questions like 'Why is your horn blunted? What did you do? How long are you in here for?' These were questions that would get her thumped a lot worse than her face ached right now.

"Coming through!" Snapped a mare and Twilight looked. Nine unicorns marched up in right progression. Half had the tips of their horns painted bright red. The other half had the rounded off nubs painted red. They were fit, predatory, and in a mind to leave the cell block before the herd. And Twilight had the misfortune of matching eyes with a bright orange mare with a deep green mane styled in spikes. It was only a moment.

That was all it took.

"Cunt!" She snapped, and body slammed Twilight into Lullaby, knocking the pair to the ground. Instantly the rest of her herd curled around her as the orange mare lunged, but the herd blocked her from reaching Twilight as she pointed a hoof. "Cunt looked at me! Fucking looked at me!" She snapped at Twilight. "You want somethin? Huh? Do ya? Bring it, cunt!"

"Shh," Lullaby said as she held Twilight. "Let Mother handle this."

Mother wasn't the biggest or strongest mare, but she muscled her way to look into the orange mare in the eye in every way Twilight shouldn't. She didn't say a thing. The other eight red tipped unicorns laughed, egging the orange mare to 'Kick her Ass, Ripper'. Mother just stood in the way, never speaking. A half minute later, the orange mare spat. "Little cunt better watch her place!" She snapped at Twilight, "Or I'm gonna sit on her fucking face!" Then she laughed as she turned and rejoined the other eight as they trotted out.

Twilight had thought in prison you automatically joined a gang. She'd thought her herd was a gang. She'd been wrong, and corrected firmly by fifty. The Red Spears... they were a gang. So too the Broken Stone and the Raptors. All together they were probably less than a quarter of the population, but they were responsible for the vast majority of the prison's violence. Joining involved putting a pony in the hospital, preferably the morgue.

Mother turned and looked down at Twilight, and instantly she was struct by how appropriate her name was. She could see her own mom and Celestia in those disappointed eyes. "Watch your look," was all she said, and all she had to say. Then she turned and nodded. "Let's go. The Hillbillies are coming." The earth ponies filed out of their cells casually, their eyes unfocused and dull, coming together in a mass that would walk over anything in their path. Mother got the herd moving again, and Twilight worked desperate to get her look right.

Having no day or night each of the four cell blocks had a different schedule. Red, her block, yellow, green, and blue, the male block. The round the clock shift kept Blackhorn humming at all hours. They weren't supposed to ever supposed to see the other prison populations. When they ascended the ramp up to the Trough, trustees were cleaning up a massive smear of blood. Twilight's eyes stuck to it as they moved into line behind the city slickers. The pegasi were already at their table, eating quickly. The Raptors kept alternating look outs, half with their heads down, half watching, then alternating in perfect synchronization.

"What happened?" Twilight asked as the line for food filed past the trustee with the bucket and sponge. The trustee, an earth pony mare in an orange jumpsuit, shifted her head to add Twilight to her peripheral vision, frowning as if she couldn't believe the question. There were guards on catwalks overlooking the Trough.

"Who cares, Eggy? That's from the yellows. They're all psycho," Lullaby said with a sniff.

Twilight caught Fifty glaring at her and she struggled to resume her flat stare. She got her tray slid it down after Lulabye's, doing everything she could not to look at the Hillbilly behind her. She sounded... big. So instead she looked at the only ponies you could look at, the Trustees. They all wore the identical orange jumpsuits that allowed them to move to restricted areas of the prison for work.

She'd imagined the food at Prison to be horrible and disgusting, but what it really was was... cheap. Lots of stale baked goods, oats, and hay. There was some vegetable and some fruit, and a desert at the end. Her tray had a half dozen little dips in it, and at each trustee she extended the tray or held it back. Food was deposited in its bowl, and you moved on to the next. At the very end, the largest bowl was filled with water, and then you carried it back to your table with your herd. Twilight was lucky enough to get a seat next to Fifty.

Only then could you drop the look.

"What'd that letter from home say, Socks?" Mother asked with a little smile to a white and gray mare a little older that Twilight.

"Oh, just mom bumping hooves," Socks said with a smile. "Telling me how my sister's getting married in Manehattan. He wants chickens at the ceremony, can you imagine? Right? For dancing! Worst wedding ever, right?" She asked, her eyes darting from one person to the next, her grin strained.

"Sure is," Fifty answered with her own understanding smile. "Might as well have pigs as the bridesmaids."

Socks nodded, some of the tension leaving her. "Anyway, she sent her love and she's counting the days. Only Four hundred and seventy two to go!" She said with forced cheer. "Not long at all, is it? M- might not have a foal yet by the time I'm out."

"Be over in no time flat," Fifty assured her with a nod. "And even if you aren't, you can tell your niece or nephew how silly mom's wedding was with chicken dancing. Won't know any better."

Twilight froze as she saw Mother looking at her, as if Celestia was about to give quiz. "Have you written to your family, Egghead?" the matriarchical mare asked evenly. The other conversations dropped as everypony at their table regarded her.

"N-not yet," Twilight admitted, her ears dropping. "I don't know what to say."

"No letters from them?" Mother pressed. Twilight shook her head. "Then write them telling them its okay to write you. Ask them how they're doing. Family. Friends. Sports. Weather. Anything. There's a whole world outside this place. If you don't remember it, you won't last here," Mother said calmly.

"Just remember, anything you write gets read." Fifty pointed out. "Warden gives a bonus to letter screeners that catch trouble, so they're always looking. So you're fine. You're fine. Your bed is fine. Everything is fine. Otherwise that letter goes in a box and that box might be given to you when you leave, or 'lost'."

"Remember Quiet? Never shut up? Kept writing all the time. All those letters she wrote to Celestia? How many boxes were there? Two? Three?" a mare Twilight didn't know asked the table grinning, then spoke to Twilight. "Last warden put her on incinerator duty. Made her toss every single one into the incinerator, one by one."

"Wrong to do that to Quiet," Fifty said, and the grinning mare's grin faded. "Never spoke or wrote again. Or ate. Got drug out of here by medical. Hear she's in Yellow now."

"Died last week," Mother said quietly. "Suicide in the latrine."

Now there were no smiles, and the mare that brought in up had gone back to the look, as if she'd never said it at all. Mother then smiled at Twilight. "Still. Write. You can't just disappear here and reappear when you're done as if nothing happened."

An earth pony trustee trotted towards the table, and just from her eyes Twilight knew something was different about her. Her bright green coat and tan mane reminded Twilight of an apple, and she wore a casual smile on her face. "Mother, may I?" she asked, actually looking at mother casually, but bowing her head a little and she waved her over. Twilight nudged herself aside so she could wiggle up between Twilight and Fifty. "Hey Fifty. Is it weeks or years?" Fifty's casual smile disappeared and the earth pony moved on. "So ladies, what do you need, what do you want, what do you have?" Twilight stared, and she met Twilight's eye, her smile slipping in a moment of uncertainty. "Hi! New horn, huh? You're that special one, right?"

"Eggheads' new," Fifty confirmed, her posture casual.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Sour. I get things," she said as she tugged out a little notebook with a large ink stain and a toothpick.

"But... can't we just buy things at the commissary?" Twilight asked. Even giving Fifty half her commissary money, she still had enough to afford basics like toilet paper. The mares chuckled as if she'd just cracked a joke.

"You are very new, ain'tcha?" she said with a grin.

"The canteen's not exactly the best run store in Equestria," Fifty explained. "And it's expensive. They sell out all the time, so if you see something in the canteen to buy, snag it."

"So, I get things. People that have things they don't want. People that want things they don't have." She dipped the toothpick in twilight's water bowl, swirled it around the stain to collect some fresh ink, and looked around at the rest of the mares.

"I need hair curlers," one mare offered, her mane a shaggy mess. "I've got some hoofpolish left over."

"Blue paint," requested Socks. "I'll do a charcoal commission sketch."

"You're never going to finish before you go," Fifty said to her with a grin, but Socks merely smiled.

The mares went around the table creating a wish list of things they wanted, and sour took them all down. Fifty wanted a newer pillow. Mother wanted yarn. She then looked at Twilight with that tiny sliver of wood in her lips, her pad covered with some strange, minute code. "Books," Twilight said faintly. "Some I can always have with me."

Sour furrowed her brows, rolling the toothpick to the corner of her mouth. "Any particular books? Also, how are you paying? I can set you up with a line of credit-"

"Sour," Mother said firmly. "No."

Sour gave a shrug. "Just saying, Mother dearest," Sour rolled on. "What about services? You've got a nice, pointy horn-"

"Sour," Mother repeated in a tone only Celestia could match.

"Fine! Fine! But I need something. Nothing only gets you nothing," Sour said with a hapless smile and shrug.

"What about forms?" Fifty asked.

"Forms?" Twilight asked with a frown.

"Filling out legal forms for a pony," Mother explained patiently. "They're very... complicated. Any mistake and a request can get denied."

"They're also annoying as fuck," Fifty growled.

"She smart enough to do them right?" Sour asked. "The Slickers and Hillbillies won't be happy if she messes them up."

"She can't do worse than our 'legal liaison.' I haven't heard one peep on my request," Socks said, ears drooping.

Twilight looked at her, "What do you mean?"

"Paperclip's worth about a pound of roadapples. He's the warden's little pet, looking out for trouble. He's supposed to be on our side, but he knows where his bread is buttered. Lazy too," Fifty said with a glower.

"If we fill them out in advance, he just moves them on. But if you don't check the right box then it gets denied," Lullaby said, mimicking bringing down a stamp. "Bang! Denied." She beamed a smile at Twilight, "I think you'd be perfect for the job, Egghead."

"Lullaby," growled Fifty, and the mare immediately put on her glassy eyed look as if she'd said nothing at all.

"I can try my best," Twilight said to Sour.

The mare then shrugged. "I know Rotten needs forms. I'll put you down for that. Give me some titles and some time and I'll see what I can do." Twilight balked a moment. 'Rotten'? Then she glanced at Mother and Fifty. Mother gave a tiny smile; Fifty a minuscule little shrug. If they weren't alarmed... she took a deep breath and gave her titles.

"Right o!" Sour said brightly as she put the piece of paper and sliver away in her jumpsuit. "Give me a week and I'll see what I can do!"

Sour drew back, and when she did, Twilight's eyes moved to the mare directly behind her: the same orange mare she'd looked at in the hall. She seemed to almost instinctively detect Twilight's stare, and snapped her head to the side to glare at Twilight over her shoulder. "What you lookin' at?" she snarled, twisting in her seat. "What you lookin' at!" the mare demanded. Twilight knew she should use the look, but fear kept her eyes locked on the mare's. "You want somethin'? You want it!" She yelled as she started to rise to her hooves. The rest of the gang was rising as well, and the herd rose too. All around, the other clumps of ponies lowered their conversation, watching at the spectacle unfolding. Somepony was taking bets.

"Egghead!" Fifty snapped, but Twilight couldn't help herself. The sight of the mare's face twisted in rage, the red hoofpolish painting the tip of her horn, and the stress made her give a nervous little laugh as she leaned away.

It was precisely the wrong thing to do.

Faster than Twilight imagined, the orange mare was on her table, and jumped the distance to land on the table in front of Twilight. "You laughin! You lookin! You dyin!" she roared. The guards were running down from the catwalks overlooking the dining area, blowing a whistle sharply. She reared up, raising her hooves for a stomp. 'Rip-her! Rip-her! Rip-her!' chanted the rest of the gang.

Twilight rose; it was the only motion she could do to try to get anywhere that wasn't stomped. She rose up just as the orange mare came down.

Right atop Twilight's horn.

Hooves thumped into Twilight's back as she felt something hot and wet dripping down through her mane, a weight crushing her back down to sit at the table. Twilight shifted to the side, and the orange mare collapsed on the table before her. Suddenly the gang wasn't laughing. They were looking at her with gazes that would melt lead. Ripper, if that was her name, had curled up, pressing her legs tight against the hole that Twilight had punched in her torso. The orange mare's eyes were wide in shock. The rest of Twilight's herd was pulling back from her with expressions ranging from shock to annoyance to disappointment.

She realized why too late. A hoof hooked around her neck and sized her from behind, locking her down in a crushing grip and pulling her backwards, off the seat. The guard hauled her back from the rest of the herd, and she struggled to breathe, her hooves scrapping at the guard's leg. That resulted in one guard on either side pinning her hooves to the floor while a third pinned her flailing hind legs.

"Stop fighting! Stop fighting! Stop fighting!" the guards commanded her as she struggled, as if she could stop as her body tried to fight for its very survival. The commands came with beatings now, with the guards smacking her torso hard as she tried to breath. Things started to go dark in her vision, and finally her struggles weakened. That seemed to satisfy the guards enough that they moved and let her see two earth ponies loading Ripper on a stretcher. She'd never imagined that much blood before.

Then a guard moved over her. Not at guard, the guard. Ironwing stared down at her. "My my. In trouble already?" He then addressed the guard. "Have her taken to medical and chisel her horn. Then thirty days in isolation." His eyes met Twilight's, and for the first time since she'd met him, he smiled. "Go."