Well, let’s see if I can remember everything, but if I don’t, that’s why there’s sequels, right?
Anyway, I was an adolescent foal at the time of the incident. I didn’t even have my cutie mark yet. I remember being teased about that… I still hate those bullies… but forget it… I was on a field trip to the Rainbow Factory with my flight school, headed by Mr. Lightwing. As his name implies, he wasn’t the best at flying, so I’m assuming that’s why he took teaching as his job. A white coat and light grey mane and tail gave him the impression of being able to be blown away with a single wing-flap. Frosty blue eyes completed this sense of weightlessness. But whatever, I’m getting off track.
So we were at the Rainbow Factory, looking at the vats of individual spectra. I was at the back of the group, walking with my best friend, Crimson Flash. A pegasus like me, he had a dullish red coat that looked like bloody rust, and orange eyes. Purple and bright red streaked through his mane and tale. He already had his cutie mark, a many-rayed star surrounded by a purple swirl. I don’t know where he was from, other than he had no family when he showed up in Cloudsdale, starving and homeless, so my family took him in.
Once again, I’m diverging…must be getting nostalgic…
So here I was, minding my own business, listening intently to what Mr. Lightwing was saying (hey, I’m telling the story, I can exaggerate what I want), as we passed the vat of purple spectra.
“OOOOOHHH! Look at that!” yelled Crimson Flash, as he surged forward to get a better look at where the individual spectra were merging to make a rainbow.
As he passed me, he brushed against my wing, pushing me a little to the side. I teetered on the edge of the purple spectra vat. I didn’t regain my balance in time. I fell in, spectra flowing into my eyes, nose, ears, mouth, hair, and soaking into my skin. It tasted kinda like jalapeño hot sauce. I struggled to hold my breath, not wanting to know what would happen if I swallowed any spectra. Anyway, Mr. Lightwing turned around, the memorized lecture on rainbows on his lips, when he realized I wasn’t there. (Crimson told me what happened after I fell in)
Stunned for a moment, he looked around aimlessly until he noticed a splash of purple spectra on the deck from when I had fallen in.
“Oh no. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no…” he said. He ran over to the vat, knocking into a unicorn inspector from Canterlot.
“Hey, watch it! You almost hit my clipboard!” she snarled, almost dropping a clipboard with more pages than it was intended to hold. She noticed the panicked look on Mr. Lightwing’s face. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“One of my students just fell into the spectra!” he said pathetically, looking into the swirling, purple tub.
“WHAT!?” the inspector said. (I actually heard her say that even though I was in the spectra) “ARE YOU KIDDING!?”
“Noooooooo…” Mr. Lightwing wailed.
“We gotta get him out of there!” screamed the unicorn inspector. She started shooting off beams of magic in a panic, without any thought for what spells she was using. One of these hit the vat I was in, and I started to feel my hair being pulled and twisted about. My eyes felt like someone was pushing on them with a fiery brand. My nose…well…let’s just say it hurt. My ears too. My mouth and throat felt like it just swallowed the hottest imaginable pepper ever. My skin felt like it was being ripped and pulled apart. These pains intensified almost to an unbearable degree, until the inspector finally had enough sense to use a levitation spell and pull me out. When I finally opened my eyes, after wiping my face with a wing to get all the gooey spectra off, all I saw was astonished, blank, dumbfounded, and you-name-it faces.
“Y-y-your hair… i-it’s glowing…” said Crimson, stunned by what he saw.
“What?” I said. I used my wingtip to grab a bit of my hair. He was right. It was glowing a bright, neon purple.
“Whoa…this is crazy…” I said. My mane and tail were originally a jet black, like my coat, but now they were purple.
When I got home my mom freaked out.
“Black Light, what the hell happened to you!?” she said with a horrified look on her face.
“I…um…fell into a vat of spectra…”
“Oh. My. Gosh. You WHAT!?”
“Well they said I’d be fine…just…now my mane and tail glow purple…”
“OF COURSE THEY DO!” she sobbed. “Are you alright?”
“Yes…I think…”
“Well I’m going to have to talk with Mr. Lightwing…and the Rainbow Factory CEOs…this is outrageous…my son…fell into a freaking vat of SPECTRA! We might need to take you to the doctor…just to make sure there’s no…ANYTHING!”
I could tell she was about to blow up, so I asked her if she made any cucumber salad (funny thing about me…I love eating cukes almost to excessiveness). She looked deep into my eyes, and said, half sadly, “At least now there’s some color coordination among you.” I was notorious in my family for wearing a lime-green, orange, and navy-blue sweater to our Hearth’s Warming Eve celebrations.
I trotted over to the mirror we had over one of the cabinets in the kitchen, and gasped. I stared hungrily at my reflection, stunned by what had happened.
My eyes.
What happened to my eyes?
My mom used to call them my little ink-spills, on account of them being so black.
But now, now they were purple. A vivid, luminescent purple that matched my new mane.
Little did I know that this was only the start of a long string of issues I had to deal with, all being able to be tracked back to why my mane glows.
Later that night something else happened that definitely deserves attention. My dad, working the night shift, was home late. I usually stayed up until he got home, lying in bed and defying my mom’s orders to fall asleep. When he got home my dad always made hot cocoa, and when I would come tumbling down the stairs, he would hand me a cup and we would sit and just, relax… This time was a bit different. Being in the snow department, my dad was a lot later than usual, as he had to prepare for some early autumn snow falls. When he walked through the door he must have stumbled from sheer exhaustion, as I heard him crash heavily to the ground.
I sprinted down the stairs to help him, my mom already asleep, tired of waiting up for my dad. The lights were all out, and I found my dad sprawled on the floor near the open door with the glittering light of my mane.
“Dad, are you alright?” I asked in a panic.
“I don’t know Blacky… my knee really hurts…” he said, his face looking grotesque and twisted with pain. “Your mother called me at work earlier and told me the story of what happened at the rainbow factory…”
“Yeah but are you alright?” I asked again, concerned for him.
“I think I might be able to stand…” he said, but when he tried, he just collapsed onto the floor again. “I guess not.” He said, the pain evident now in his voice. “Go get your mother…”
I obeyed, and ran upstairs to wake my mom. When I shook her a few times and explained what happened, she jumped out of her bed and galloped past me. I followed, and saw her leaning over my dad. Crimson soon appeared at my side, woken up by all the noise, and together we watched as my mom tried to coax my dad into standing up. He couldn’t. His knee just gave out every time.
“Blacky, I need you to run and get the doctor…” my dad said hoarsely. He must have been in intense pain.
“Ok, I’ll be right back…” I said, before sprinting out the door. I heard my dad call for Crimson to help my mom lift him onto the couch. I flew down the street, took a few turns, turned sharply past a late-night diner, and ended up at the hospital.
“Is there a doctor that can come with me right now?!” I yelled, crashing through the doors into the spotlessly clean lobby.
“Yes, deary, what’s the problem?” said a nurse, pushing a cart with medical supplies past me. She gave my mane an odd look, but said nothing about it.
“My-dad-fell-and-broke-his-knee-and-he-can’t-stand-up!” I said in a rush, eager to be getting back to my dad with the help he so desperately needed.
“Ok deary, I’ll send Dr. Grey Patch with you. Just hold on a sec deary…” She walked down a hall, and soon reappeared without her cart but with Dr. Grey Patch. A tall unicorn with a dark, grey-green coat, black hair, and yellow eyes that had a pair of glasses on them, he looked like he could fix my dad up in no time at all. His eyes focused on my glowing mane for a second, and I could almost see the gears turning behind those bright yellow eyes as to how I got my mane to give off that purple light. But soon a reassuring look appeared his face, and he asked me what happened. I told him the whole story, and then he suddenly whipped around and trotted down the hall he just came from. He came back in almost a minute with his medical saddlebags, and asked me where I lived.
“Follow me…” I said, glad to finally be getting help to my dad.
We galloped/flew back the way I had come, and were soon back at my house. My father was lying on the couch, groaning and favoring his rear-left knee.
“Ok, I’m not going to lie, this might hurt a bit…” said Dr. Grey Patch. Soon he had my dad’s knee in a splint, and gave him a swig of medicine that was supposed to take the pain away. My dad was soon sleeping fretfully on the couch.
“Keep him lying down for a day or so, and I’ll come back to do a checkup…” said Dr. Grey Patch. He turned to leave, but he stopped and glanced at my mane again. His gaze traveled down my body, looking for any other anomalies. Eventually he looked at my flank, and gave a start of surprise. I followed his gaze. Imprinted on my side was a purple three-pronged flame, which shimmered as I moved.
“Hmm…looks like someone just found their special talent…” he said, before looking at my mane again and walking out the door to my mom’s sincere profession of thanks. It took her a while to realize what Dr. Grey Patch had said, and when she did, she looked to my flank, and let out a positive shriek of joy.
“OH BLACK LIGHT! YOU GOT YOU’RE CUTIE MARK!” she screamed.
“Yeah…I guess I did!”
“Oh my gosh!! If only your father was awake!!”
“Well he soon will be if we don’t keep it down…” said Crimson dryly.
That was a late night for me. My mom insisted that I go to bed and celebrate tomorrow after we got over the initial excitement of my cutie mark. I stayed up until dawn, laying on my bed and thinking what my special talent was. Looking back, the only conclusion I can come up with is that my talent is to give light to those who don’t have it, since my mane and tail glow even in the blackest of night.
School the next day was hell.
Pink Paint, the local bully-in-chief, thought my new mane and tail were absolutely hilarious.
“Hey, hey guys! Look! It’s glow butt! Hey there, glow butt! Ya sit in anything…nasty…lately? Huh?” He sniggered in the hall between classes.
“Pink, stop it…” I said, not wanting to be the center of attention, again… Pink was the one who had unrelentingly teased me about being a blank flank. But of course, it was just my luck that when I got my cutie mark, something else shows up to bring embarrassment.
“Why? Why should I? Give me a reason, and I might think about it… or forget it, really. I just don’t care.” Pink Paint said. If it came down to a fight, I knew he would win. I was on the small side, not really able to put any weight behind punches. And Crimson, well he was no better. He, to be blunt, looked like a girl. His frame was slim. He couldn’t fight any better than me.
“Well, you’re a jerk…” I started to say, but a hoof slammed against my shoulder and pushed me up against the wall.
“I said a good reason…” he said, glaring down into my eyes. At that moment the bell rang, saving me from being further humiliated by this idiot. Pink dropped his hooves off my shoulders, and backed away slowly.
“You’d better watch yourself, now, Black Light… you don’t want to… shall we say get hurt…” he said before turning to enter class.
And thus the pattern for my life was set for a year.
So about a year after the incident with the spectra, my family and I were in Canterlot visiting some friends, and we were staying at a hotel in the capital. We had gone over to our friends’ house early in the morning, but my parents had left in the late afternoon, leaving me and Crimson Flash there to play hoof-ball with a few friends. The first game took an hour, and by then it was already dusk. After a few games it was ten o’clock and too dark to see well, and everyone else had to leave. So Crimson and I were walking back to our room at the hotel, and were eagerly re-living the details of one really fast-paced game.
“Haha, did you see how I punched in that one score?!” Crimson asked enthusiastically.
“Bro, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here right now. You would have killed me.” I replied.
“Yeah you know I would’ve! Oh man but did you see when Neon Tracker dived right under Razorleaf?”
“YEEEES. That was crazy!” I yelled.
“I know! It was the winning point!” said Crimson.
“Yeeeaaaahh…”
“She’s got skills alright… Hey, ya think she’d go out with me?” Crimson asked thoughtfully.
“MMMMGGGRRRPPPPHHH… What?!” I exploded. “Hahaha… Really? You like Neon Tracker?”
“So?!” Crimson said, blushing under my ecstatic stare.
“Haha… It’s just kinda funny, that’s all…” I backed off. I didn’t want to get him too upset, just tease him. But things soon took a turn for the worse.
“Oh yeah right like it wasn’t funny when you liked Poppy Kernel!” said Crimson, happy to find something to turn the conversation around.
“Hey, that was a year ago!” I retorted, taking my turn to blush. “Besides, she already had a foal-friend…”
“Whatever. I still think you like her.”
“I do NOT.”
“Suuuuuuuure…”
“Really! Stop!”
“Ok ok fine but only if you stop it with teasing me about Neon Tracker…”
“Ok deal…”
We rounded a corner and were in a darker street without lights. Warehouses lined either side of the road. Walking past one we heard a crash inside. We stopped, listening.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Dunno…” said Crimson.
“Should we check it out?”
With a shrug, Crimson walked over to the door and gave it a shove. It opened into darkness. We walked in, my mane and tail lighting up a few feet of space.
“Is anyone there?” Crimson called. There was no answer other than silence.
“Hey, here’s the light switch…” I said, flicking on the lights from next to the door. A mouse scuttered from some hiding spot and ran out the open door between my legs. “Hmm… Must have been a mouse.” I said, closing the door.
I don’t think Crimson heard me, as he had walked over to a tall stack of cardboard boxes. Looking around, I noticed that there were piles upon piles of these boxes.
“Whoa, look at this box…” Crimson said, pulling it out of the pile, very carefully so as not to knock the pile over.
“What’s that label say?” I said, seeing a sticker on the top of the box.
I trotted over to Crimson’s side, and read: Marble w/ Extra Frosting
“What’s that mean?”
“Only one way to find out…” said Crimson, setting the box down on the cement floor and opening it carefully. What met our eyes deserved to be in some sort of art gallery. It was the most beautiful chocolate and vanilla marble cake I had ever seen, with massive amounts of frosting piled on top.
“Whoa… Do you think they’re all cakes?” asked Crimson. I walked over to grab another box, and upon opening it saw an angel food cake, living up to its name.
“Bro, this means one thing…” I said, a look of pure joy radiating from my face. I was close to tears I was so happy. “We’re in a warehouse full of cakes.”
“Ooh… Man… I don’t think I should’ve eaten that last one…” groaned Crimson.
“Yeah, I’m stuffed…” I replied.
We were leaning back on a pile of a dozen empty boxes, all with assorted labels and smears of frosting.
“D’ya think we should be getting back?” asked Crimson.
“Yeah, probably…”
I stood up while Crimson licked one of his hooves. I walked heavily over to the door, and noticed a sign on the back of it that we hadn’t seen when we walked in. It read: ALL EMPLOYEES OF PRINCESS CELESTIA’S CAKE WAREHOUSE MUST WEAR GLOVES AND WASH HOOVES BEFORE AND AFTER WORKING. A thrill of fear ran down my spine. Princess Celestia’s cake warehouse? What the heck?!
“Hey, what’s the hold up?” asked Crimson, trotting over to my side. He noticed the sign, and paled as he read it.
“Oh, crap…” he said quietly.
“We are in so much trouble...” I said.
“But only if we get caught.” Crimson said quickly.
“Well then let’s get out of here!” I said in a strained voice.
I reached to open the door, only to have it open itself.
“Quick! Behind those boxes!” I hissed as Crimson and I dived away from the door. We rolled behind a stack of boxes, and listened as we heard some-pony’s hoofsteps. The door shut, and we heard a click. We were now locked in the warehouse with an unknown pony.
“Hehehe… What Princess Celestia don’t know won’t hurt her…” said a gruff, rustic voice. “Ah’ll just order some to replace these, an’ no-pony will know the difference…”
I heard a sliding noise, and looking up, saw that one of the boxes forming our hiding spot was being pulled down.
“Mmmm… Red velvet…” said the voice.
The sound of munching was soon evident, and Crimson and I looked at each other in dismay.
“What do we do?” Crimson mouthed.
All I could do was shrug my shoulders, and peer around the corner. What I saw was, I have to admit, slightly funny. An overweight, male earth pony sat on the floor, his back to me, eating red velvet cake out of its box. He moved to one side, and I saw that he wore an apron, and that his cutie mark was a measuring cup. He must have been one of the employees of the Princess’s cake warehouse. Just the idea of an employee of Princess Celestia eating her prized cakes almost set me laughing, despite the gravity of the situation. But then I realized that if Crimson and I got caught, we were no better off than if the earth pony got caught. That thought smothered the laughs that were threatening to come out.
Looking around, I noticed something that I hadn’t when we first came in. There was another door opposite the main door, and it looked like another way out. I nudged Crimson, and he looked around until he spotted the door. He nodded, staring at the door.
Lying low to the ground, I crawled out of our hiding spot to the next pile of boxes. Crimson followed me, and when we reached the shelter of the shadows cast by the boxes, we both breathed a sigh of relief.
The earth pony smacked his lips, and threw the box to one side. It was then that he noticed the pile of empty boxes from mine and Crimson’s feast.
“What the heck?” he said, perplexed. “Is someone else here? Man, I woulda swore dat them boxes war’nt there when Ah got done with mah shift a few hours ago…”
Crimson and I shared a panicked look, when we heard hoofsteps coming over to our new hiding spot.
“Hmm… Well, they don’t seem to ah be here anymore... And as Ah’m all alone still… Ah guess one more won’t hurt no-pony…” the earth pony said, as he pulled down another box from above us.
“Ooh… This one’s carrot…”
Our heartrates back to somewhat normal, Crimson and I crawled out from behind the boxes. The earth pony had his face in the box and was eating enthusiastically. We were almost at the door. So close. Just a few more feet. Almost.
Suddenly I tripped over the red velvet box that the earth pony had chucked over his shoulder. I crashed into a rack of frosting canisters, sending them spinning and flying everywhere. Crimson was the first to react. He grabbed my hoof and pulled me upright as the earth pony looked over, orange frosting smeared on his face.
“HEY!” he yelled, as Crimson and I bolted the remaining few feet to the door.
“Get back here! Ya’ll can’t go in there!” he shouted, as Crimson yanked the door open and thrust himself into darkness. I followed immediately, and before the earth pony had a chance to grab the door, I slid the bolt shut. Now the only light was coming from my mane. I backed away from the door where the earth pony was pounding on it, and almost fell into a hole in the floor if Crimson didn’t grab me and pull me away from the edge.
“Careful!” he said.
“Whoa, I did not see that there…”
With my mane glowing, I saw that there were stairs leading down into abyssal darkness.
“What’s down there, ya think?” asked Crimson.
“Well I’m not going back out the door to get caught, so I’m hoping it’s a way out…” I replied.
The earth pony was still banging on the door as we walked down the spiral staircase. It grew progressively colder the farther we went down. I didn’t even bother trying to count the stairs. I knew that they would end when they would end. But either way, I knew that we must have been far underneath Canterlot, possibly even below the crystal caves. It was clear that we were no longer in the warehouse, but some sort of area just attached to it. The silence pressed on my ears and our hoofsteps fell mute on the fine dust of possibly centuries of accumulation. We finally got to the bottom, and noticed that we were at the end of a circular, stone tunnel. It was approximately 8 feet wide and tall. A few simple warning signs were posted at its entrance.
“Hey, Black Light, I don’t know about this…” said Crimson.
“It’s the only way out, unless we want to go to the young colt’s correction facility…” I said.
“I just have a feeling about this place, that’s all.”
“Yeah it’s kinda creepy…”
We both stopped talking and looked down the tunnel, our breath steaming.
“Well, no use waiting right?” said Crimson, as he stepped into the tunnel, ignoring the signs. He went a few steps, and suddenly let out a shriek.
“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”
I saw something yellow whip around one of his rearlegs. It pull him backwards out of the light of my mane, and into the blackness beyond.
“HELP! AAAGGGGHHH!!!” he screamed as he swiftly disappeared, clawing at the stone brick floor.
“CRIMSON! NO!” I yelled, frozen in my hoofsteps. Suddenly, all was silent again. No screams, no calls for help, no drip of water, no crack of rock. Just pure, deathly, silence.
What had happened to Crimson? Where did he go? Was he alright? Should I try to find him, and if necessary, save him? Go back? Get the earth pony’s help? All these thoughts whirled through my mind, one after another. At this moment, I was freaking out. I mean, I have freaked out before, but that was over my homework being late, or an ill-thrown hoof-ball that broke the neighbor’s window. This was something different, completely different, especially in the aspect that I was all alone. Normally I had Crimson to help me out, but now I was on my own. Which brought me back to Crimson. Was he hurt? Dead? At that thought I really lost it. I let fear completely take over me. My heart was racing, my blood rushing in my ears, my adrenaline going overtime. The blind fear I felt clouded my thoughts, taking over my senses.
At that moment, my perspective of the world changed.
My senses, once normal, started acting like they were on steroids.
My vision increased, so that I could not just see things with my normal vision, but also from a different type of light that was coming from my mane and tail. It was different than its normal light, because it lit up more space around me, and allowed me to see every tiny detail of the tunnel, right down to the tiny, superficial scuff marks Crimson left on the floor, and individual specks of dust floating directly in front of my eyes. Colors were duller except for a purple tinge that stained everything, and outlines were clearer than ever.
My ears, attuned to the silence, were now even more pressed upon by the quiet than before. But I soon heard a high-pitched scream that sounded like it was coming from a long way away or behind a wall.
I could smell every 1,852 flavors of cake upstairs in the warehouse (there must have been ventilation shafts running directly from the warehouse to the tunnel), and taste all the different flavors I had eaten in the past two hours.
My skin felt like it was being twisted and pulled to many things, all of them coming from the direction of the tunnel. They all had a steady, almost hum-like feel to them, except one that had a glitchy, shaky feel.
All of this happened in one instant, one tiny flicker, of time.
You would think that I would’ve passed out or fainted from senses suddenly acting on me like this. But I didn’t. It was like instinct, like I knew that this was going to happen. That’s the best I can explain it, it was just so weird, so different, yet so familiar as if I had been using them my whole life.
I could see the tunnel stretched onwards, even farther than my new sight could see, and to all appearances it looked empty and bare. But my skin told me otherwise. It was being pulled towards a point on the wall that was right next to where Crimson disappeared. I took a few steps forward, and sure enough, a yellow whip of magic materialized and would have grabbed my leg had I not been expecting it and moved out of its reach, walking on the other side of the tunnel. I advanced a few yards, and could hear what I assumed to be Crimson’s desperate cries for help. My skin now felt like it was being pulled towards something in front and above me on the ceiling. I took a step forward, ready for another whip.
Clink! My high-pitched hearing picked up a slight noise, and I could hear a light whooshing noise. I smelled rusty iron. My skin was being tugged to something directly in front of me, and I saw a huge battleax with a yellow aura around it about to slam into my face. I ducked under it just in time. If I had seen it a millisecond late, I would have been dead. Rolling to one side I evaded a second battleax, this one tearing through the air from the wall. (I had felt my skin being pulled towards it after I ducked the first)
Lying flat on the ground, I crawled until I was a few feet away from the battleaxes’ murderous arcs. I lay panting, blood in my mouth, tasting more vividly than ever before. I had knocked my jaw against the floor when I evaded the second ax. A trickle of blood ran down my face. It was some time before I summoned the courage to stand up on shaking knees. Crimson was still out there. I needed to find him and get the hell out of here before we both died.
Weakly, I took a few steps forward. My skin was now being pulled to something in the floor. I stopped directly before this new trap (at least I was assuming it was a trap), wondering what it could be. I picked up a pebble that had fallen from the stone ceiling, and threw it in front of me. It clattered around, and eventually settled in a spot a few feet from my front hooves. Nothing happened. I took another step forward. Abruptly the floor beneath me gave out, and I fell, the air whispering a death song in my finely-tuned ears.
