Section II
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See Me, Break Me, Free Me

Section II

SKYLINE’S GARAGE
ONE WEEK AFTER AWAKENING FROM COMA
PONYVILLE, EQUESTRIA

Skyline awoke abruptly in a cold sweat.... again. This was happening every night since he woke from that damned coma. They became no less vivid. He sat up, and rubbed his eyes. He swung his legs off the bed and stood up. He pulled on a dirty shirt he grabbed off the ground. He headed to his small kitchen, and made himself a mug of hot chocolate, instead of his usually caffeinated beverage. He was already way too awake after that nightmare.
He snatched up his TV remote. He hit the power button and the TV blinked on, illuminating the dark room. He flipped through the channels until he eventually hitting the major news network, where he was met by none other than his own photograph. He turned up the volume.
“-has been publicly released, telling of a soldier by the name of Skyline, who raided the hideout of the Queen Chrysalis even before the actual army did. He then fell into a coma for three months, and he awoke just a week ago. We’ll go now to reporters Bill and Ted for mo-”
Skyline turned off the TV. He took a slow, deep breath, his chest rising up and down. His breathing quickened gradually, and he felt as if some unknown dark presence was collapsing around him. He clutched his heart, nearly falling off the couch he’d taken a seat on. A panic attack. A few minutes later, he finds himself curled up on the ground in front of the couch, not remembering how he got there. He gave a shaky laugh.
“Well, congrats Chrysy, you broke me…” Skyline thinks aloud, under his breath. He lay there for a few more moments, and brought himself up onto his feet. He strode over to his closet and grabbed his metallic white backpack, throwing it over his shoulder. The backpack seemed to melt as the metal liquefied and spread around his body. It hardened into his armored form as it covered him completely, and looked smooth to the touch, shining in the little light in the room. It looked brand new, except for the large crack streaked across the visor of his helmet. He opened his wings a little, the limbs covered in a protective aluminum fiber layer, largely covered in faux metal feathers. He broke into a sprint and jumped through the open glass sliding door on the upper deck and his wings extended, making him glide. He gave a strong downward stroke of his wings, and he accelerated into the dark morning sky.
“Maybe I can use this…”

Skyline arrived about an hour later, soaring along with his wings fully extended at the edge of the troposphere. He found the landmark he’d remembered from the mission that ballsed everything up. He pitched downward, and vertically spread his wings, acting as air brakes. He landed, his wings flapping intermittently. He folded them back up on his back, and glanced around. He jogged over toward the entrance Chrysalis’ abandoned base of operations. Or rather, the off-limits one. He looked around and made sure he was alone. He made a point to check the surrounding trees. He walked to the building, brandishing his handgun and opened the door slowly with his weapon at the ready. The room was clear, as he’d suspected.
He shut the door behind him, moving inside. He took a quick look around, trying to find something that he hadn’t found the first time. He almost didn’t notice Afterburner’s bloodstain at his feet. There were a couple desks, a shelf, and a few broken chairs, not including the sealed off door in the back of the room. It was re-sealed by the army that came through after his operation. He went to a desk near the center of the room and flipped through the scattered papers. The room looked something like a bunker from a certain World War II, what with the short range antique radio console on the desktop. Army green and all. He found a few papers of interest: Old Changeling war papers about an experiment that would bring victory. The grabbed these, and went over to the other desk. Again, he found papers on the same topic. They were developing some kind of weapon, meant to tamper with the mind rather than physical damage.
“Bingo.”
He found nothing on the shelf. The room was now actually cleared. He then found himself before the sealed door, stuffing the papers into a slot meant for a magazine. He turned up the strength enhancement on his suit and kicked the door open, busting it off its hinges. The sheet of metal flew a few meters and hit the dirt. Skyline disabled the enhancement and set his helmet to filter his air. At first glance, it was just a dirt passage. A couple sections of metal piping ran at its sides here and there. The papers said the project had a storage unit nearby.
He punched a couple commands into his arm’s data pad and his vision switched to a metal detector. His vision flashed with blue, the darker color meaning not metal, and light coloring meaning metal. He almost immediately found what he was looking for. He turned of the visor and used a little magic to spawn a shovel into his hands. He gave it a quick spin in his hands, and he started digging.
Twenty minutes later, he got close enough to knock on it with the metal tip of the shovel, but there’s no way he’d do that. That would be really, really bad. He opened up the dirt around it, and got a good look at it. It was a large metal gas container, like an oversized propane tank, about the size of a car.
“Here we go. Let’s get to work.”

He managed to get it to his garage by sundown. He carefully had redistributed it into smaller, carriable tanks, which he got his Ford VelociRaptor for. He destroyed the evidence, with a little down-to-earth gas pouring and he set it off with a lighter. Back at home, he whisked it all to his secret basement he had in his garage, and placed it in a specially prepared room inside, where there sat a row of a couple lab tables and atop them sat various chemistry instruments. He set them all down and closed the door behind him, airtight, for obvious reasons.
He set his suit to HAZMAT conditions. He strode over to a long metal table, and grabbed a tank from the side of the clean, white-walled room. He gently placed it onto the table and began connecting the corresponding hose, tightening it as much as he could by hand. He then grabbed an assortment of chemicals from a nearby metal cabinet and placed them all together on the metal surface. He booted up his computer, and cracked his knuckles.
He worked for hours, trying to condense and dilute the gas, not as potent as the mixture is normally, but not too weak. He was busy adding some water to the solution when his phone started ringing. He tapped a button on the side of his helmet, connecting the call to it.
“Skyline Motorsports Garage, this is Sky.”
“Skyline?” replied Fluttershy. “Is, uh, something wrong? You haven’t been around lately…”
Sky casually finished up what he was doing and began to copy down the data. “I’ve been.. Recovering? I don’t really know.”
“Well, er, before that mission of yours, you sent me a text saying you wanted to hang out. We never got too, when you came back in that coma..” she said, holding back tears. Skyline sighed.
“I’m sorry, I really am. I blame Chrysalis. Things have just gotten more complicated than they used to be. We can hang later today, make up for lost time,” Skyline responded. He sighed quietly. A date. His last one for awhile.
“O-okay,” Fluttershy said with a sniff. “I’ll be at my cottage.”
“I’ll pick you up in, say.. Two hours? Yeah. Alright?”
“Okay. See you,” she said, hanging up.
Skyline exhaled, and regained his bearings. He began loading the final solution into .50 caliber compatible tranquilizer rounds.

Skyline got into his ‘71 2000GTR and turned the key. The car shuddered to life, echoing in the garage. Sky climbed back out to make sure his equipment was secure. He popped the trunk and in a hidden trunk compartment lied multiple parts for a DSR .50 Sniper rifle, along with its ammunition. He shut the trunk, and went back to the open door. He sat back in the driver’s seat, and gave the engine a few low revs, pulling slowly out of the building, running out and closing the bay door when he got to the curb. He pulled out onto the road and hit it, the exhaust growling in response. The car turned into a blur of darkness.
He reached Fluttershy’s home quickly. He parked beside the path and threw the car into park, leaving it running. He got out and walked to the front door, holding a gift box behind his back. A necklace. Its pendant was an exquisitely engraved butterfly. He arrived at the door, and gave a light knock. The door swung open shortly after.
“Hey Flutters. Nice to see you.”
“Skyline!” she exclaimed. She gave him a hug, and felt the box behind his back. “What’s this?”
Skyline held it out to her. “Got a little something for ya.” She opened it and smiled. She gave Skyline another hug. “It’s beautiful, thank you.”
“Shall we get going?” Skyline asked, holding his hand out.

Skyline pulled up to a nice little restaurant in town. He found a parking space, and shut of the car. He climbed out and walked around to the other side to help Fluttershy out of the Recaro bucket seat. They walked together to the front doors, and Skyline held it open for his date. They walked inside and were seated at a small table with chairs on either side. They were given menus and they were left to select their meals.
A long silence passed. Skyline was hunched over the table, gazing down at the plastic sheet before him. He silently twiddled his thumbs.
“Skyline,” Fluttershy started. “Where did you grow up? Here? In some other dimension…?”
Skyline sighed, his eyes not moving from the menu. “I grew up here. I grew up in Canterlot, and by this dimension’s time, I’m roughly ninety-seven years old…”
Fluttershy raised her eyebrow a little at this, but otherwise wasn’t too surprised. “So you’re ninety-seven?”
“Due to time differences in the multiverse. I’m actually in my, like, mid-twenties.”
“You don’t know your age?” She asks.
“It’s hard to be someone like me. I’m surprised I’m not dead with some of the things I’ve done,” He replies, his voice even.
Fluttershy nodded. “Growing up here, almost a hundred years ago for that matter, it must not have gone well…”
Skyline looked up at her, closing the menu. “No. I lost my parents in infantry, but I grew up in the halls of the Canterlot castle because I was an alicorn. I needed… special attention. But it was very secret, hush hush at the time. School was bad too. They tried having me at a public school. I was different. Kids either made fun of me or stayed away. Didn’t have a single friend,” Skyline says, an edge of sadness creeping into his voice.
“I learned I had a gift. I could build. I could engineer. My knowlege exceeded almost all grown folks of the time. I was fourteen when the ball dropped. Being Celestia’s scholar, and an alicorn, I dabbed into the unknown area of dimension travel. The magic mirror in the Crystal Empire got my attention specifically. After a while, I broke the seal on instant travel. I learned to break the fourth wall. Literally.”
Fluttershy sat in silence, interested.
“I soon learned to break the fourth wall’s fourth wall. It’s, like, sixteen walls. I became a man with power. To some a madman with power. At the end of the day, I have power, but I don’t know if I’m mad or not”
“Well,” Fluttershy replies thoughtfully. “What does your heart tell you?”
Skyline’s eyes locked with hers. “It says I’m broken, that’s what.”

Skyline drove her home when they had finished their meals. After she was safely home, he stopped by the road a few blocks away. He put it in park and yanked the E-brake. He sat there for another moment, taking a deep breath. He focused his magic into the thread of this dimension, and tore it. He put all his energy into this, his hands white-knuckling the steering wheel. His horn’s glow went from faint to supernova, and a shockwave suddenly burst from the vehicle. A wave of sound, a dulled bang, blew through the area, causing Sky’s gauge cluster to blink off, and they flickered back on after a few seconds. He groaned and laid back in his seat. He did it.
He created a copy of this dimension.
He almost blacked out, but he forced himself to stay awake. He climbed out of the car, and collapsed onto the road. He pulled himself to his feet, and got to the trunk. He unlocked and opened the trunk, and it swung up with a tiny creak. He pulled out the rifle pieces and assembled them, the metal clicking and snapping into place. He slapped in a magazine, and pulled the bolt, releasing it with a loud metallic click.
He could see Flutter’s home through some trees in the distance. It was bittersweet, dealing with her first. He took aim. He saw her through an open window.
He had his reasons, his explanations. There was a reason this was a copy. He had to know.
Skyline held the Barrett .50 straight in his hands, taking aim. He positioned his eye behind the scope. He accounted for bullet drop, and pulled the trigger. The shot was a hushed bang, jerking the gun back into Sky’s shoulder, but not as much as any bullet would. The dart flew straight into her neck. It buried itself into her skin and she clutched the spot where it hit. She pulled it out, but, too late, she collapsed to the ground, out of sight from the window. The modified dose would leave her unconscious for a couple hours. It’d have the same effects as Sky experienced in his coma… without the coma. So he assumed.
He got back into the car and eased on the gas, headed off into town. By the end of the night he’d use the last five rounds on the other girls. After his job was finished, he headed straight home, and he shut the garage door behind him tight. After locking it up, he headed to his basement, and threw the heavy bolt from the inside. He took a deep breath, and grabbed a granola bar from his nearby stash of food. He took a seat at the computer desk against the opposite wall, and hit the power button.

Two weeks.
That was all it took for folks in Ponyville to start disappearing. Another week after that, there was a sudden change to the flight test for the younger pegasi kids up in Cloudsdale, which Sky thought to be related.
AJ turned cold. Rarity’s shop became run down, deserted even. A rumor was going around that she went blind in one eye due to a scratch from her cat, Opal. Twilight hasn’t been seen ever since her gave her the dose, but Spike was sent to Canterlot. Not a coincidence. People report her home smelling faintly of copper when they pass by. A copper smell was a telltale sign of blood. Rainbow Dash looked like she was hiding something. Pinkie looked at people differently, and sometimes retreated to her place for long periods of time. Fluttershy, poor Fluttershy, seemed as quiet as ever, maybe even more so, and she spent considerable time in her shed near her home. She went to Cloudsdale on occasion with RD as well.
Now it’s been two months. He knew that if he want to tap into that darker side of himself, he had to join their ranks. He already had the arrangements set up. He strode over to his desk, down in his basement, and pulled open a large drawer. He pulled out a small box and pulled out a small bio-computer chip, along with a syringe-like device. He put the chip into the device, and put it to his upper left arm. He pressed the button and it was lodged into his tissue with a brief spike of pain. He wiped away the drop of blood left by the mark. The chip was to track his vitals and other data. It would automatically store this data, preventing the need of an outside connection. Skyline took a seat in the chair by the desk. In the box remained a lone liquid syringe. The off green colored fluid contained inside looked so harmless. Skyline sighed, sitting back in deep thought. What if it doesn’t work? He thought. What if I never go back?
He had to know. He grabbed the syringe out of the box and flicked the cap off with his thumb. The plastic cap hit the concrete floor and rolled a short distance. Skyline saw his scared reflection in the glass. He closed his eyes and pulled up his sleeve. He his held it over his forearm, and pushed it in. He squeezed the plunger down, and quickly pulled the needle back out. Pain erupted in his arm, and he dropped the syringe, making it shatter on the ground. He fell to his knees, and barely supported himself with his arms. His arms gave out, and he fell to the ground, pain spreading through him like a wildfire. His eyelids became heavy, and after a futile effort to keep them open, he lost, and his vision went dark.

Author's Note

Starting to dip into the good stuff! Grimdark content, coming to you next time!