The Difference in Equality

"Let's try something new," says Punching Bag. I have been in the headquarters for two weeks and in that time I have managed to get better at archery. But a broken leg doesn't help me in any way. Flame Lord said that the piece of wood that hit my leg might have given me an infection. At first I became worried, but after two weeks the need to worry has gone away due to the fact that there have been no signs of an infection.

When the nurse told me that I was out for two days, the fear of the thought that my father is dead has grew. It sometimes kept me awake late at night trembling with anxiety. All I can do is just sit here and do nothing about it. The thought of it drives me insane.

Punching Bag reaches into the saddlebag underneath the weapons. As his hoof moves around inside of the saddlebag, I can hear the clattering noise of dozens of metal objects. He finally pulls out a white unicorn horn that looks like it had been cut straight off of a unicorn's head.

"WHAT THE-?" I say loudly in panic. Did he kill somepony? I then remember the white mare he mentioned a few days ago. No wonder how he got away with it! "Did you kill that mare?"

Punching Bag scoffs and says, "Who are you- Oh, that mare in Carousel Boutique?" He quickly shakes his head. "No, no, I just put a stunning spell on her with this horn. I kicked it off another pony's head when he lifted me with his magic. She's alive, but I heard that she's in the hospital at Ponyville now."

My eyes widen when I imagine Punching Bag kicking off someone's horn. "That doesn't make it any better!" I exclaim. He grunts.

"Are you going to let me teach you?" He says.

"I refuse to be taught how to kick off a unicorn's horn!" I say in protest.

"I'm not gonna teach you that," He says. "Hear me out: When a unicorn dies, its horn doesn't lose its magic. That's why we mostly take these off of unicorns who already died of natural causes. We use the horns as weapons." But it still isn't right. It would be like cutting off a pegasus's wings to give you the ability to fly. Not only is it unethical, but it is disgusting.

"But that's wrong!" I say. Punching Bag sighs.

"I know, Nick," He begins. "But these are desperate times. And you know what they say - well, you don't - but they say 'Desperate times call for desperate measures' and we're putting that saying into play." Desperate times should never call for anything as desperate as this. Why choose to disrespect the dead? "I'll demonstrate how this works. Watch closely."

He walks over to one of the mannequins and pushes it so that it is in the middle of the training room to make sure that it is in range. Coiling his hoof around the horn, Punching Bag aims the unicorn horn at the mannequin. He jerks his arm in an upward motion as if recoil came from the horn. Snap.

A yellow beam of light comes from the tip of the horn and it penetrates the mannequin's head, causing bits of the mannequin to violently come off. The harmful beam from the horn made a deep hole in the mannequin.

"Now you try." He extends his hoof with the horn on it to give it to me, but I shake my head and back off.

"I can't," I say. "This is complete disrespect. There should be some other way we can fight against them. We can continue archery, right?"

Punching Bag frowns and says, "Unless you want to become timberwolf food and an easy target for those equality ponies, this is the only way as of right now," With hesitation, I coil my hoof around the unicorn horn from Punching Bag's hoof. With the horn pointed at the mannequin's chest, I focus my aim but don't coil my hoof around the horn too tightly in disgust. Am I really going to stoop down to their level? Is using the horn of a unicorn that was once alive to my advantage in a future battle the right thing to do?

I think about all of the unicorns I've ever hated to justify my choice of using a unicorn horn as a weapon. Only one name comes to mind. Starlight Glimmer. The one who got me here in the first place. I think of all of the dreadful things she has done to me and my head fumes with anger. Focusing really hard on the mannequin, my arm jerks upward and I hear the snapping noise come from the horn and the same yellow beam comes out. The beam makes impact on the mannequin's chest and small debris violently flies about. There is a deep hole in the mannequin's chest. Once Punching Bag sees what I did, he laughs and says, "Excellent work, Nick!" Though I don't feel proud of myself for causing damage to a fake pony that would have killed a real pony. But in the end, it's all for survival. This is what I have to do if I want to save my parents. To stop Starlight Glimmer.

Punching Bag made me practice shooting out of a unicorn horn for a while. The more times I shot the mannequin, the less sympathy I feel. When Punching Bag leaves the training room, I decide to practice my flying. Just in case I feel like getting out of here and flying over the danger, I'll know what to do. When pegasi are old enough to learn how to fly, they do a wing exercise called "Ground Flapping". It's simple. All you have to do is flap your wings over and over again but you don't fly. It exercises your wings so that your wings move more smoothly and comfortably.

I begin Ground Flapping at a slow pace and then I pick up the speed as I progress. My wings quickly felt fully outstretched and comfortable. I flap even fast and I start to rise up. This is a thing that I normally let happen because I need to practice flying higher than just a few feet. It's a way to be effective when I have another encounter with danger. The calming breeze on my wings sends a sensation of slight coldness through my wings. The breeze makes me fly even easier. I feel my head bump into the ceiling and I instantly plummet back down to the floor. When I hit the fell, I went from being relaxed to being in panic for a split second. When my back hit the floor, I barely feel any pain due to the ceiling not being high enough for flight practice. When I get back up on my hooves I look at my flank and scowl. Of course. The equal sign cutie mark.

"I'll have to stop you right there," Says Cross Heart. He is the head medic of the rebellion. Flame Lord advised that I go see him after I told him that I suspected that my cutie mark is the reason I'm not doing so well at almost everything. When ponies in the village get their original cutie mark removed, it gets replaced with an equal sign. Starlight Glimmer herself removes it with a magic stick. I never understood that ritual. When ponies have the equal sign cutie mark, their skills at basically anything are the same as everyone else who has the same cutie mark.

"Cutie marks are not capable of holding such magic. The only magic they possess is the ability to appear on your flank." He looks at me as if I told him an obvious lie. The constant buzzing of the lights in the ceiling doesn't make this less awkward. This bald-headed and brown-coated stallion might think that I have gone mad.

"No, I've seen the process happen," I say. "I'm telling the truth, sir. I know because I'm the only pony you have from inside the village." I tell him about how the ponies' talents change when they get the equal sign cutie marks.

"I see," says Cross Heart. "Well, your cutie mark is going to get removed either way. With magic, of course. And by the way, you're not the only pony who's been extracted from the village. There's two others just like you."

Ponies just like me? Who are they? I had a feeling that I wasn't the only one. Then a thought comes to mind that replaces worry with what was once excitement. "Did they save their parents?" I ask. Cross Heart frowns.

"The Soldiers were able to do it," he says. This sends anger through my head. What was so different about my parents? When I ask him this, he says, "Because the ponies we extracted weren't imprisoned." I clench my teeth and feel my hooves slightly shake in anger.

"Listen here, you bald waste of space! If those Soldiers are too lazy sitting on their flanks, then I'll save my parents by myself!" I yell in frustration. My sudden outburst does not startle Cross Heart.

"I'm not a therapist, so I don't treat suicidal thoughts, but I do treat physical wounds like the one in your brain," says Cross Heart. "Because as far as I'm concerned, no sane pony would ever dare risking their lives going to that village. Especially a twelve-year-old."

"And no sane pony would go near a pony whose face looks like my flank," I say coolly.

After being kicked out of the "Healing Room" as the sign above the room indicates, I go straight to the dormitory to lay down in my bed and do nothing for the rest of the day. I still don't appreciate how Cross Heart pushed me out like that. It's not my fault that he's never heard the truth before. When he pushed me out, it didn't treat my broken leg very well. The pain didn't stop until two minutes.

I rest a pillow on my forehead and grunt. If I could just leave and get my parents. Maybe I wouldn't hate my life as much. Right now living in the headquarters isn't as good as living in the village. My eyes remain closed as I run through multiple thoughts in my head. My parents, my uneventful life, the village, and my leg. And soon after that, the list went on. I must have closed my eyes for too long, because then I begin to slowly fall asleep.

I feel lightheaded and all of my limbs feel week. There's a sour taste in my mouth that screams grogginess. The dormitory has been filled up with ponies and it seems that I am the only one awake. I hear snoring from different kinds of ponies in the room, especially the stallions. The right thing to do would be to fall asleep again, but I have already had a long rest.

As I sit upright, I scan the room. The room is only lit by a very small gap underneath the steel door that has dim light shining through. In pure paranoia that someone might have seen that I have awoken, I scan the room once more. Nopony seems to be looking, however. I swing myself off of the bed, front legs first and then hind legs, making sure that I gently place my injured leg on the ground. I slowly start to move across the dormitory towards the door, gently placing one hoof in front of the other very gently on the ground so that I don't make a single hoofstep.

When my hoof rests upon the square-shaped button which is not lighting up like usual, I remember the fact that the doors make a loud slamming noise once activated. Waking up all of the ponies in the dormitory is not in my best interest right now, so I just stand there and think of a different way to get in. During my thinking process, my hoof slightly pushes on the button and as it pushes, the door slowly moves upwards and it's barely making a sound. I keep slowly pushing until I hear a small thumping noise which shows that the door has reached the top. I then remember that the door stays up when fully pressed, only to slam back down after a while.

I quickly move outside of the dormitory and slam my hoof on the button that is on the other side of the wall once I'm there. As I peek around the corner, I pull my hoof away from the button at a very slow pace and as I remove my hoof, the door slowly lowers. Once the door is fully shut, I back away from the door and look at the large, empty, and barely lit main hall. I then look back at the dormitory door. How do I get away with things like this?

I nonchalantly move down the hall, looking both ways to look for any ponies. I seem paranoid about any ponies that might be walking about, so I put my paranoia behind me. This time I am going to replace the feeling in my chest with curiosity which got me outside of the dormitory in the first place. I want to explore the headquarters. But what room shall I explore first?

The muffled sound of talking can be heard from the door that is two doors away from the dormitory. I use my slow hoof technique on the buttons and once the door shuts behind me, I can make out the sound of Punching Bag's voice in the room full of wooden shelves filled with files that contain rusty pieces of parchment and some shelves that contain metal boxes that are labeled.

"Trust me, sir," says Punching Bag. "I'm trying as hard as I can. Just give me some more time!"

"I've waited twelve years, John," says the voice of an old stallion. "Yet you come back every time with things that has nothing to do with him! I'm growing impatient. You know that I can't live forever, so why don't you try harder? I'll be damned if I have to wait one more year."

I peek around the corner of the bookshelf and I see Punching Bag looking at what appears to be a smoke figure that is in the life-sized shape of a pony right next to a unicorn horn that is standing upright and has smoke coming from it. Right next to Punching Bag is his saddlebag which has been propped open.

"You won't, sir! I have a plan! You'll just have to wait just a few more days and then I'll do it. Plus his arrival was very recent. I'm sure that I can get some more information on him. Just a few more days because there's something that I have to do that involves the Soldiers. " says Punching Bag hastily. "In the end, it'll be more than one victory. I'll have information on the boy, he'll be dealt with, and I'll deliver the documents."

"Fine," says the smoke figure. "But remember: I did not send you in there just to mess around, so you shall not test my patience. You'll have two weeks. Understand?" Punching Bag gulps and nods. "Good." The smoke figure then becomes a cloud of smoke that quickly sucks itself into the unicorn horn, making it fall over. After he puts the horn back in his saddlebag, Punching Bag turns around and I gasp and pull my head back. I need to get out of here. I think Punching Bag's plotting to kill me.

Without doing much thinking, I slam my hoof on the square button and watch as the door quickly moves upward, making its loud noise and triggering a yelp from Punching Bag. I run out the door and hastily move down the hall. While looking behind me, I see Punching Bag look at me and gasp.

"YOU!" he yells. He charges after me and as soon as he does, the lights in the hall fully go out and I quickly fly to the ceiling and once my head bumps on the roof, I look down at the pitch dark hall. I can't see a single thing. That's when I feel my eyes slightly vibrate as I see the room being lit up by a light color of green, but still see Punching Bag moving around as if blind. "Damn it! Where are you, boy?"

Punching Bag focuses his attention to the ceiling and scans it as if he doesn't see me. But why? Isn't the room lit up? But if he can't see it, that must mean one thing. I look down at my injured leg and see that the bandage is gone and it has been fully healed. No sign of a scratch or anything. I then remember the color of the timberwolf's eyes. Is this the result of the infection?

At this point, Punching Bag's eyes have focused on the exact same spot where I am twice. Then he grunts loudly as an orb of light comes out of what seems to be his unicorn horn because in the second that he was lit by the orb of light, I could see him pointing the horn in my direction. The light comes towards me and when it gets close enough, the orb just stays there in mid-air. He gasps and jerks his hoof upwards as the deadly light comes from it and misses me. I then dive down out of his sight and press a barely lit square button. When it slides up, I leap inside without hesitation.

I stumble into a room that is just as dark as the main hall. Punching Bag followed the loud sound of the door and went into the same room as I, unicorn horn in his mouth. As I look at him, I quietly step backwards so that he doesn't hear my hoofsteps. He looks in every direction that he hears sound from. I then look around in the room where I have ran into, and I find out that it is a long hallway with metal bars that make jail cells in which some of them contain a pony.

The ponies start to wake up at Punching Bag's frantic and muffled shouts of things like "Stop hiding!" and "Show yourself!" as if he thinks that I will obey. Punching Bag then pulls the unicorn horn out of his mouth and makes another orb of light in the middle of the hall. The light reveals me, causing me to jump into the nearest jail cell to avoid the light. The door of the jail cell swings open when I jump inside and then it seals itself immediately.

Sweat trickles down my back and I tremble in fear as I notice that a mare with village-normal hair and an equal sign cutie mark is in the same room as me. She smiles in satisfaction and laughs maniacally.

"Finally!" she shouts. "He's finally within my reach!" Punching Bag assumes the same smile.

"Good work, Sara!' says Punching Bag. "Now make sure that he stays there! Damian will be very pleased! And Nick, if you tell anyone about this, I'll know. And you'll wish you would've stayed in the village."

"Oh, he's not going anywhere," says Sara. I then see purple light around my hooves and suddenly they feel heavier. I can't lift them from the ground. The spell is weighing my hooves to the ground! When I flap my wings, I don't move as if my hooves are glued to the floor. Sara laughs again.

"No! I'm getting out of here!" I pathetically shout.

Sara laughs again and says, "Not gonna happen, kiddo!"

When the room lights up, my night vision goes away and the sound of indistinct chatter fills the prison. The steel door slams open and when it does, Punching Bag has gone missing. Flame Lord enters the room and walks down the hall of prison cells.

"The hell's going on in here?" he says loudly as he walks, looking both ways into each cell.

"Flame Lord!" I shout when Flame Lord looks at the cell opposite of the one I'm in. Flame Lord looks at my cell and his eyes widen.

"Nick?" he says. "What are you doing in there?" I almost tell him that this is Punching Bag's doing, but then I remember his warning and I do not wish to take that risk.

"I wandered out," I say, which is half of the truth. Suddenly, the soft sound of a mare's voice booms through the speakers on the ceiling.

"Removal of seal detected," says the voice. "Enter the pass phrase."

"Ah, crap!" exclaims Flame Lord. "One of the Soldiers have the phrase! I'll be right back, Nick!" Then he zooms to the door, presses the button, and exits.

"He has a minute to enter the pass phrase," says Sara happily. "There's no way he's gonna make it." Tinks enters the room along with Flame Lord and they both look worried.

"Alright, I got this," she says. "The mare walks down the mountain!" When she says that, she comes closer to the cell I'm in as all of the doors in the prison open and the light on my hooves disappear. Knowing that I'm free from the spell, I run out of the cell in an instant to join Tinks and Flame Lord. Shouts of joy fill the room as the prisoners exit their cells. Then they run towards the exit and that's when Tinks turns a large chunk of the floor into ice, making the prisoners slip and fall.

Sara leaps over the ice to attack me and I flinch only to see a spell of Flame Lord's strike her across the face and causes her to topple backwards onto the along with the rest. When she and the prisoners try to get back up, they fall back over again, which makes me smile.

"Prisoner release detected. T-t-taking se-" the mare's voice stutters and turns into static. Red gas erupts from all of speakers, in which point, Flame Lord and Tinks turn around and instantly run to the exit.

"RUN!" shouts Flame Lord. I quickly follow the two and I look behind me to see the prisoners desperately trying to escape the ice, only to be covered in the gas. When they do, they stop moving and breathing. My heart races as I hastily run though the open doorway before the gas could fully fill the room. I look to the left and see the populace of the rebellion leaving their rooms and red gas escaping the dormitory. The gas also comes from above and covers the ceiling like a big red cloud. Ponies rush through the exit door to leave the headquarters.

Flame Lord and Tinks have already rushed up the stairs and I try to follow them only to feel hooves wrap around the leg that was once injured and make me trip and fall while I was trying to run, breaking a tooth. I look behind to see that Sara was the one who tripped me and she pins me to the ground. I desperately swing my hooves at her and try to kick her, but she is still pinning me down strongly. In my attempts to be freed, my focus falls upon an open saddlebag that looks like Punching Bag's. A unicorn horn rolls out and I reach out my hoof to grab it.

"If I'm dying in here, then there's no way I'm not gonna let you go down without me!" yells Sara in triumph. My hoof finally coils around the unicorn horn and I flip over and when I feel the smoke on my legs, I panic and quickly point the horn at a random spot on Sara's body and jerk my hoof upward. With a loud snap, the white light comes out of the horn and strikes Sara in a foreleg. She shouts and releases me from her strong grip. I take the opportunity to struggle my way out of her grasp and onto my hooves. I then run through the open exit door and seal it shut, hearing the clicking noise of the lock. I run up the stairs and as I do, I hear Sara's hooves banging on the door as she screams for help. Eventually the banging and screaming stopped and it slowly turned to silence.

When I manage to escape the headquarters, I see everyone in the rebellion crowded outside of the giant black mountain that holds the headquarters. The door seals shut behind me and I look behind me to see a big equal sign spray painted in red on the mountain. The sound of worried chatter fills the air as I scan the crowd to look for Flame Lord. When I do manage to find him, I notice that he is telling everyone to remain calm. I approach him and he sighs in relief.

"Nick, what happened back there?" he asks, looking relieved to know that I am alive.

"One... One of the ponies back there tripped me!" I say quickly, wanting to get away from the topic as soon as possible.

"Wait, on purpose?" he says.

"Yes, and I-I did what I had to do," I say.

"What do you mean?" he says.

"I ran away and locked her in there," I say.
Flame Lord was in shock when I told him the news. He looks like he couldn't possibly believe that I, a twelve-year-old boy, could kill someone. He turns away and turns to assist Seven Leaf Clover to walk, who is panting and currently being assisted by Lucky Trots.

"I can't feel me legs," says Seven Leaf Clover weakly as she slowly limps then falls over on the rough and rocky ground. The poor old mare is helped up with Flame Lord's magic as Lucky Trots pulls out a wooden chair from his saddlebag for Seven Leaf to rest on. Meanwhile, ponies worriedly chatter about things that they might have left behind and ponies that they have seen die due to the gas. When I observe the crowd, I notice that the number of ponies in the rebellion has decreased.

Flame Lord asks me about Punching Bag's sudden disappearance and I tell him everything about it, despite Punching Bag's warning. I tell him how Punching Bag was talking to an old stallion and how he was attempting to find me and possibly kill me. He shakes his head in disbelief and walks away to check the ponies who are alive.

Later in the night, the remaining Soldiers have set up camp by using makeshift beds made out of bear fur rugs that they had stored in their saddlebags. It turns out that it was enough to supply twenty-six ponies with a place to sleep. Flame Lord supplied us with a fire using his fire magic. It seems like his name isn't Flame Lord for nothing.

Flame Lord told us that we would have to stay here until the gas in the headquarters cleared, which would mean staying close to village territory and quite possibly timberwolf territory.

A rumor spread that the Soldiers are now planning a revenge mission on the village. But I can't stand not knowing whether it is true or not. Just the thought of not knowing something very important that others do has the potential to keep me up for hours. So far I've heard of some things that I'm not supposed to, and I want to keep that going. It can even keep me alive.

Fast-Eye Julie drops her saddlebag and rests on a bear fur rug, clearly exhausted from assisting ponies and setting up camp. She then falls asleep, her fast moving eyes coming to a halt. I am also laid down on a rug not far from hers and since she is the closest Soldier, she can be the solution to finding out about the rumor. Of course she wouldn't tell me about the it personally, but I would have a perfect opportunity to listen in on the Soldiers' conversations if I could climb into one of their saddlebags.

When everypony seems to be sleeping, I stand up and slowly make my way towards Fast-Eye's saddlebag. On the way, I step over ponies and move my hooves slowly to avoid the crunching of the rocks. When I approach the saddlebag, I open it and slowly reach my hoof inside and feel many different objects touching my hoof and I start to question my plan of actually going inside of one of these things. After all, I might land on something sharp. Knowing that I need to take the risk, I poke my head inside and see all of the objects in the bag. But only now the bag looks much bigger from the inside than it does on the outside. I'm lucky that the only weapon is a bow and some few arrows. The other objects are eye drops, medical tools, and an anvil. I leap into the saddlebag and and land softly on the ground. Now I just need to wait.

A stallion's hushed voice tells Fast-Eye to wake up. She wakes up and silently yawns. She picks up the saddlebag and all of its contents slide about and so do I. I get knocked over and get hit by bottles of medicine and poked by a longbow. It's a good thing that she's only walking because if she were to go any faster, arrows would be a problem, too. I'm just glad that the arrows are in a quiver. After a while, the items stop moving and the bag comes to a stop.

"What'd you wake me up for, Flame?" says Fast-Eye lazily.

"Most of the Soldiers and I are going to Canterlot, and that includes you," says Flame Lord.

"Why are we going there?" says Fast-Eye, sounding more awake.

"We need to go to the castle and take all of the dark magic spell books that we can find," says Flame Lord.

"But isn't dark magic dangerous to ponies who cast it?" says Fast-Eye, sounding worried.

"We're not going to let Starlight win," says Flame Lord.