The Difference in Equality

I have been thrown into the darkest and smallest room I've seen. Almost the size of my room. There is a box of hay in the corner and a circular box of water the right of it. The room is only lit by two thin and tall windows. They don't even light the majority of the room. I feel heat through my entire body due to the warmth of the room. I am already soaked with sweat, so the heat only adds on to it. The stench is unbelievably terrible.

I look around the prison to find torn pictures of posters of equal signs. Above the hay there is a large picture frame with a picture of another equal sign. These things are everywhere. At least there are no more ponies staring at me. I'd faint if I was stared at by a crowd for any longer. To my right there is a single bookshelf on the wall that consists of books with equal signs on the cover. I'm going to go mad just like the pony dad mentioned if I see one more of these. Suddenly, the distorted sound of a mare's voice can be heard in the ceiling. This makes me jump and my head immediately snaps up to the ceiling.

After a few more seconds of the distorted noise, the voice finally becomes coherent. The voice does not belong to Starlight Glimmer, but some other random mare. "In sameness, there is peace," the voice says. I can hear the words throughout the entire village as well. "Exceptionalism is a lie." The word leaves me puzzled as to what it means. "Free yourself from your cutie mark." Been there, done that, hated it. "Choose equality as your special talent." Equality is not a talent for me. My entire life I have been an outcast to this village. I know I'm special somewhere outside of this village. I belong in Ponyville or any other place that is far away from here.

"To excel is to fail. Be your best by never being your best. Difference is frustration."

The only frustration I'm getting is from this voice I say in my mind.

"Conformity will set you free. Accept your limitations and happiness will follow." I've been facing limitations my entire life and I'm miserable. "You're no better than your friends." Then the voice repeats its message. I get angered by the fact that I might have to listen to this all day, so I take a book from the bookshelf and fly to the speaker.

"I've had enough of this," I say with a grunt. I swing the book at the speaker with as much force as I can put into my arms. Despite my great effort, it made no difference to the voice in the speaker.

After I wack the speaker a few more times, I've done as little as barely make a dent in it. I grunt in frustration and softly land on the ground. Instead of trying to make further damage to the speaker, I take a pile of hay from the box and set it on the ground to use as a pillow. Then I take two chunks of hay and stuff them in my ears. It blocked out some of the noise, but not all of it. It's better than hearing that voice to its full extent. I lay down on my scratchy hay pillow and close my eyes.

The next day, I wake up to the creaking sound of the prison door. A light shines in and hits me in the eye. My eyes were so used to the dark, so I block out the light with an arm. When my eyes get used to the light, I lower my arm and notice Starlight Glimmer standing at the door with a rather annoying smile on her face.

"Are you ready to join us again, Nick?" she says. I feel glad that the punishment only lasted for a day. It wasn't so bad as I thought it was, despite that annoying repeating message. I nod my head and I feel something scratching at my ears. I reach for my right ear and notice I still have the chunks of hay in my ears. Cringing in embarrassment, I pull each chunk of hay out of my ear and stand up to join Starlight Glimmer with the crowd of ponies behind her.

Once I exit the prison, I look both ways to check if there are any guards. Surprisingly, there are none. I scan the crowd to see if there are any guards I have happened to overlook, but there is nopony who looks like they could be an authority here. Nothing except village-normal ponies. This can be an easy escape. Once my parents see that I'm running away, they can run by my side and we can escape together. I don't have to stay here for the rest of my life. I'm going to Ponyville.

Starlight is still standing there smiling. She looks very smug like she is sure that she has already changed my ways. This is when an idea hits me. If I'm going to escape, I'm going out with a bang. I'm going to show Starlight that she can never change me. I'm different and I can't be controlled. If I were to keep Starlight Glimmer stunned for a brief moment, it would make for an easier escape. The way she stands there looking cocky already fills me up with hatred. This is when I strike.

It all happens so quickly. I swing a hoof across her face, triggering various gasps from the crowd behind her. Without putting much thought into it, I turn and leap into the air ready to fly away. My entire body has suddenly stopped in mid-air. Starlight lifts me up with her magic so that I'm facing her. I must have hit her hard, because I see blood seeping down her cheek and she looks absolutely furious. The anger on her face sends a spine-tingling feeling through my body. Guards start running in my direction on Starlight's right, but she halts them with a hoof. She magically throws me back with so much force that my back hits the wall of the prison, causing pain to erupt on my body. The prison door slams shut in front of me and I slide down on top of the hay box. My plan failed.

Grunting with the searing pain that has hit my back, I get off of the hay box and stare at the door for what feels like a minute. I'm not going to Ponyville with my parents and I'm going to be in this prison for who knows how long? My head faces the ground in pure depression. My life is ruined and there's darn near nothing I can do about it. This is the end. Tears slowly make their way down my face as I return to my hay pillow and I lay down there. The voice message from the speaker starts to play again so I stuff two chunks of hay in my ears again. I have grown used to them hurting my ears.

After what felt like an hour, I decided to stand up and look out the window due to my excessive amount of boredom. I look out into the arid desert and sigh. The thought that I might never see what's out there disappoints me. There is an entire world to be discovered but my limit is not even a few feet outside of this small village. Then I noticed the silhouettes of three ponies in the distance running to the right. I stand corrected about the few feet rule.

The warmth of my hay pillow has made me relaxed and calm. It gives me the feeling that maybe not everything is going to go wrong. Maybe it's not too bad living in a small room with only hay and water to eat. Being to lazy to get up, I have eaten some of the hay pillow which is far better than muffins. My eyes shut and I try to ignore the constantly repeating message. While I'm drifting off into sleep, reality snaps at me and I wake up with anxiety in my chest. What if I never leave this prison after what I've done to Starlight? What if I never get to see my parents' faces again?

I'm in a calm and quiet little room in Ponyville, sitting on a stool watching my father paint. His strokes breeze through the canvas leaving a trail of light blue behind. I try to talk, but it seems like I have no control of my mouth. I try to move, but I have no control over my body. All I can do is watch my father paint, which I don't mind. My mind tingles with curiosity as to wonder about the mystery of what he is drawing. It looks like he is covering the entire with the same shade of blue like he is creating a painting of the sky.

Maybe my assumptions aren't accurate. There are a lot of things that are blue, like my coat. No, my coat is a slightly darker shade of blue that may or may not stand out to the other ponies in the village. When I delve further into my thoughts, my father dips his hoof into the black paint and smears two straight lines across the canvas. I recognize this as an equal sign. The light blue paint swirls around the canvas as if it's being magically manipulated. The paint suddenly turns into gray and the painting dries up already.

An unknown force magically pushes the painting on top of my father which makes me jump on the inside. The canvas falls through my father and as it does his hair color changes into the color purple with blue lines and his coat color changes to purple. This is no longer my father. All of the color in the room starts to fall as if it turned into some liquid and what used to be a room in Ponyville turned into a flat gray land in the middle of nowhere.

Starlight Glimmer slowly turns her head to face me and says, "I wish there was another way," Then the gray fades to black and I jerk awake in the middle of the night, making a small shout of panic.

To take my mind off of the dream, I daydream about actually being at Ponyville and not some empty gray place. After I have spent a few seconds into my thought, the message stops playing through the loudspeaker. Thank goodness. I'm expecting the door to open, but it doesn't. I open my eyes and look around to see what has stopped the speaker from playing its annoying message, but I don't see anything that could be worthy of doing so. Without having much use for them, I remove the chunks of hay from my ears. That's when it happens.

A large sound of combustion erupts from the wall to my left and it causes my ears to ring. I can feel of the rough debris hitting my face. I shut my eyes as tight as I can, hoping to wake up. This is just another dream. Everything is going to be fine I assure myself in my mind. I slowly open my eyes and I'm still in the dark prison. Except this time, there's a huge hole in the wall to the right where three stallions stand before me.

I am struck with pure panic as I sit there wide-eyed looking at these three mysterious stallions. They all have something non-village-normal about them. The stallion on the left is a pegasus with a black coat and dark blue hair, his frightening red eyes staring down at me. On the right stands an earth pony whose coat is white and hair is red with blue eyes shining in the moonlight. The third and final stallion standing in the middle is a unicorn with a orange coat and bright red hair and he has astonishing green eyes.

The three of them has a look of great urgency on their faces. The stallion in the middle yells something at me, but I can't hear him due to the ringing in my ears. The stallion looks like he is grunting in frustration and he picks me up with his magic. "We've got to go now!" He yells. This time I can hear him more clearly because the ringing in my ears has subsided. The ponies at his side run to the left which is the direction to the back of the houses. This is it. My one way trip out of here.

But what if I can't trust these stallions? This is the first time we've met and I don't know any of the other ponies that came along with him. I trust my gut and I follow the ponies. We run behind the houses most likely because they don't want to be seen by anyone. We run past a house that I recognize as my house and I come to an immediate halt. The stallion that rushed me out earlier looks at me with a more panicked expression and says, "What in Celestia's name do you think you're doing?"

My response is full of rush like his voice. "I want to take my parents with us!" I say.

"There's no time for that!" He says, gesturing his head forward. "Come on!" Three guards are rushing in from behind a building and they are all equipped with bows. When a few arrows zoom past my head I get the message and continue running. After we pass the last building, we make a turn to the middle of the village where we begin to follow a path that takes us to various rocky mountains. An arrow lands close to my hind hoof and I gasp, thinking for a split second that my leg has been hit.

The arrow is picked up by the unicorn's magic and it gets thrown backwards to where it came from with a lot of force. Not even a second after the sound of a gasp and choking can be heard. Then a violent thud to the ground. I do not think about turning my head to see a dead body. I never want to see one of those in my life.

My ears pick up the whooshing sound of the wind but then I realize it is coming from the unicorn's horn. His head is turned backward and he is facing two mares who looked like the ones who came from the Main House. A white ring has appeared on his horn and the sound of the wind gets louder as it gets closer to the tip of his horn. When the ring hits the tip, a line of light shoots out of his horn towards the direction of the two mares. When it hits the ground in between them, the beam of light detonates into an explosion. The cloud of smoke reveals what is left of them.

The four of us are running down that path over the mountains and I slowly become more and more fatigued, but I have to keep going in case we are still being pursued. "We're close to headquarters," Says the pegasus.

"Headquarters is over there, kid," Says the unicorn as he gestures his head to a big black mountain which is coming nearer as we run. When the trip to the mountain ends, we all stop to catch our breaths and the sudden feeling of guilt of not going to save my parents hits me. I could have left with them if I could have gone inside the house.

I fight back tears to avoid having a mental breakdown in front of the stallions. "Why did you take me?" I demand. There is a sound of great anger in my voice. I'm not happy with going with these stallions now.

The unicorn looks at me and says, "We send spies to look at the village every now and then. Fortunately, we found you. You are an important discovery to us. By finding you, we found a spark of hope in this generation of ponies. You are the future of a generation who can withstand the brainwashing of equality." I am completely dumbfounded by this stallion's response. Was I really that special?

"Why didn't you take my parents?" I ask angrily. "They were so close!"

The unicorn shakes his head and says, "You think we could have risked our necks any more than that?" he says. "Be happy that you're finally away from that dreadful place."

"Where's this headquarters anyways?" I say.

"It's in there," says the unicorn as we presses on the black mountain's wall. A hole in the shape of a door is visible in the mountain as the large bit of the mountain he pressed on slid down to the ground.

"C'mon, now," says the pegasus. His voice sounds like he might be in his thirties. Inside the hole in the wall is a dark and eerie staircase that is poorly lit by ceiling lights.

"Well, I don't think I really trust this," I say after I hesitate.

The pegasus grunts and says, "Fine, we'll go first since you think we're a bunch of foal foolers or something," The three of them walk down the staircase and I follow them down. At the end of the staircase there is a short hallway with a steel door at the end which has a camera on it. The camera scans us and the door abruptly swings open. They walk through the door and so do I. This is not the place I was expecting it to be. This is far better. A bit plain, but better.

The room I entered has a large hallway which is brightly lit and there is a smooth marble floor which reflects the place. There are two other hallways going to the left and right at the end of this long and wide hallway. On the walls there are huge steel doors with square shaped buttons on the side that is lit from the inside. Both walls in this hallway has three of these and I predict there are far more in the two other hallways.

An old mare with a dark green coat walks out of a door that has opened to my left and looks at the unicorn. " Ah, welcome back, Flame Lord," she says. "I see there's a new pony with ye." She looks at me and her eyes widen. "Oh my goodness! Are ye that Nick pony? The Soldiers 'ave bin talkin' about ye and the word's spread that there's actually a pony who's diff'rent in that village full of commernism and equality!" Flame Lord laughs. "It's comm-u-nis-m, Seven Leaf Clover," He says.

Seven Leaf Clover shrugs. "Bah, whatever!" she says.

Flame Lord looks at me and softly lays a hoof on his face. "Oh, I forgot to introduce you to us," he says. "I'm Flame Lord, as you've heard. This is Paladin." He points to the pegasus with the creepy red eyes. Then he gestures to the earth pony. "And that's Punching Bag. He'll be teaching you some self defense." Punching Bag chuckles.

"You need it," he says. "You've let unicorns carry you like you were nothing." He smirks at me.

"How am I supposed to prevent that?" I ask.

"That's what I'll teach you later," says Punching Bag.

"I'll show you where the dormitory is," says Flame Lord.

Flame Lord and I walk through the crowd of ponies moving about in the hallway. "You've been through a lot today. It's needed that you get some rest." I look at him with a concerned expression.

"What is this place?" I ask.

"This is the headquarters of the rebellion working against Starlight's village," he says. "I'm the leader of the rebellion. We're against the village because we believe in expressing ourselves. The ponies at the village just force other ponies into acting equal, and that's not right." He looks to the right. "And plus, th- Smoke Clouds, what did I tell you about smoking in the hallways?" He shouts. Smoke Clouds, an earth pony with a gray coat and spiky gray hair throws his cigar to the side and blows the smoke away.

His face goes red with embarrassment as he says, "I haven't been smoking, what're you talking about?" Flame Lord scowls.

"If I catch you smoking in the hall again I'll throw away all of your cigars!" He says strictly. "I don't even know why I allowed him to have them here." He mutters. He presses a white square shaped button on the wall and the steel door next to it slides open to reveal a dark room with bunk beds and bedside cabinets next to each one. "You sleep on the third one to the right. Sleep well, because you have self defense training tomorrow." He looks rather bored when he says that. I walk to the bed that he mentioned and I flop myself on the bed with both fear and anxiety tingling in my chest.

I stare at the bunk above me and sigh. All this time I've been some sort of special snowflake for a rebellion. But why me? There's plenty of other ponies in the village they could have taken. I'm very valuable as it seems. At least I'm valuable to the rebellion. To Starlight, I might be a threat that has to be rid of. But the main thing about this "threat" is the fact that I'm different. And both sides want me or want to get me off of the face of Equestria for the exact same reason.