The Experiment

by Flash Notion

Rating: teen
Tags: Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Other, Starlight Glimmer, Trixie, Horror, Profanity, Death
Length: 4385

Trixie Lulamoon wakes up in a strange place, her memories a jumble. Escaping is paramount. But is she really in danger? What about the other ponies in this place? Things aren't quite what they seem, and the truth may be the biggest trap of all.

Trixie Lulamoon wakes up in a strange place, her memories a jumble. Escaping is paramount. But is she really in danger? What about the other ponies in this place? Things aren't quite what they seem, and the truth may be the biggest trap of all.

Written for Tumbleweed's Springtime Switcheroo.

Through some fairly convoluted logic, inspired by this story: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/390405/selfless

Published 2018-04-23 11:00:07 UTC
Last updated 2018-04-23 11:00:07 UTC

Ponyville By Gaslight

Darkness. Darkness and discomfort; those were what Trixie opened her eyes to. The first was fine and, really, not bothersome at all. The second instantly made her regret waking up. Throbbing waves crashed over her brain and she instinctively stretched out, feeling an unsettling number of bones click back into their proper alignment. It was almost like her whole skeleton had been pulled apart.

Nevertheless she felt the pain ease. Her muscles still ached and she had a headache, but Trixie was a traveling stage performer. She'd dealt with those symptoms before.

Trixie twisted and stretched further, double checking that there was nothing else out of place in her body. Her neck popped a couple more times, and then she relaxed. Trixie blew strands of mane away from her face. Her hooves dragged down along the cool stone of the wall and settled on the pillow.

Wait a second...

Trixie reached back out and felt the wall, reassuring herself that she hadn't just imagined it. Stone, not wood.

This wasn't her wagon.

She frowned.

Waking up in strange places was something else Trixie had an unfortunate amount of experience with. But something about this place... It was strange, yes. But it was strangely familiar. Trixie could almost have sworn that she'd woken up like this before. In fact, it felt like she'd done it many times. Her comfortable bed in her wagon was a very hazy blip in her mental landscape.

Squinting into the shadows, Trixie thought she could see vague shapes. She shoved the blankets off- Brr- and slid to the floor.

Her hoof brushed the side of the bed on the way down, and Trixie noted it felt the same as the wall. It was stone, and very rough at that. That she'd been sleeping on rocks, it was no wonder she was hurting. But as she thought that, it felt less like a discover than like something she'd already known. The idea sent tiny, imaginary ants skittering across the inside of Trixie's skull. She absently scratched at her head, swaying on three hooves, and waited for the feeling to go away.

It didn't.

Nothing else happened in that span of seconds, either; Trixie was alone in a room blacker than a manticore's digestive tract. The first thing, she decided, was to find some light. She considered summoning a little horn-glow, befitting a powerful unicorn, but something told her not to. More a feeling than a little voice. The same itch at the back of her cranium.

Trixie instead stumbled away from the bed. After a couple steps she tensed and reached out.

There was a wall. She'd felt it, or... known it was there, somehow. That didn't make any sense, but she was sure of it.

Trixie ran a hoof over the wall, searching, until finally she felt something that wasn't stone. It was a light switch, which she pushed upward. Several bulbs embedded in the ceiling gradually warmed up. Their light slowly spread out, giving Trixie's eyes time to adjust.

There wasn't much to see. The room was almost exactly what she'd pictured, in her mind: four gray stone walls, a gray stone block for a cot, and simple white bedding. Hmm. She'd expected the blankets to be more... pattern-ful. She seemed to remember-

Ouch!

Trixie clapped a hoof against her forehead, surprised by the tingling burn she'd felt. It was if all the ants that had been crawling around in there had suddenly decided to bite.

But in the midst of the pain was something else. Trixie could see, plain as day, bedding that was blue with silver and gold pinstripes. And also... red bedding, with thick black stripes. And green-brown camouflage bedding. And polka-dotted bedding.

And then Trixie blinked, and the bedding was white. Just white.

She wondered if she hit her head while sleeping on that rock. Something told her that it wasn't so simple.

One thing that Trixie could see, now that the lights were on, was the exit. The door was tall, and wide, and layered with metal plates. Huge bolts passed through the plates and into the wood. It was a door designed to be intimidating.

And yet Trixie didn't feel it. Trixie looked at the door and, in spite of an initial gut-wrench, did not back down. She would not be bullied by a glorified wall ornament. Besides- she had a feeling it was unlocked.

She was right.

Trixie twisted the door handle and, with a fair amount of effort, shoved the portal open. She fell through into a hallway, which was decorated identically to the room. Nothing but stone walls stretching into the distance, eventually reaching a corner at the far end, hidden bulbs casting their light alongside long shadows. Swallowing her anxiety, Trixie picked herself off the floor and trotted.

As she made her way down the hall, the tingling in her head grew worse. Trixie blinked, shook her head, trying to dispel the death-circles swarming on her cerebellum. But every step just made it worse.

Where am I going? she wondered. Her hooves seemed to be moving all on their own, like her body knew where it wanted to be, even if her mind didn't. Trixie dug in her horseshoes and stopped. She was still in control. And yet... there was an urge. Something was waiting for her ahead.

Trixie rounded the corner at a jogging pace. On the other side was another empty corridor leading into the distance, eventually taking a sharp ninety degrees out of sight. Trixie kept going, sped up; she reached the next corner and she was running.

Trixie skidded to a halt just beyond the second corner and stood still a moment, panting. There was no more hallway. Around the corner was another door. This one was plain wood, like a normal house, except this was certainly not normal. The ants seemed to be having tiny seizures, turning Trixie's mind into one big alarm bell. “Don't open that door!” it screamed.

But her hoof lifted, and turned the handle, feeling very familiar indeed.

The door opened.

Trixie stepped into the room.

This room was different.

Inside, the room was still mostly stone. There were no ornaments or paintings or anything to make it look like less of a cave. What it did have was a pair of windows. Side by side, two thick-glassed windows. On the other side of each window was another room. Inside each room was a pony. And both ponies Trixie knew well.

She felt her eyes widen out of her control. She hated when that happened, hated looking afraid, but it was impossible to not be. Not when it was her best friend trapped in that room.

Starlight Glimmer paced the small cell, occasionally tapping at the walls. She even tapped the glass- she looked right at Trixie. But she didn't seem to notice. The glass is one-way, Trixie recognized. More, it seemed sound-proof. She couldn't hear the tap of hoof on stone at all.

Trixie swallowed and stepped closer, her whole body shaking. The other room was almost identical to the one she'd woken up in, just without a door. No, wait, one other difference- there were vents in the ceiling. An ice cube seemed to scrape its way down Trixie's spine. The vents seemed more than out of place. Just looking at them made her throat close up.

Trixie tore her eyes away and looked into the second room, but that wasn't much better.

Yet more empty walls, blank gray stone mirroring the first. And seated inside, a purple-furred alicorn. Princess Twilight scratched at the floor, her lips moving silently. The motions of her hoof made numbers and symbols, but nothing Trixie could actually make sense of.

Suddenly Twilight shot to her hooves and swept one leg in front of her, clearing away her mental garbage. Her mouth stretched into a frustrated scream, and her horn began to glow. And then Twilight dropped like a bushel of apples, her hooves pressed against the base of her horn. Trixie instinctively winced. She- she remembered that pain. Or she remembered remembering that pain. Trixie rubbed her horn with one hoof, little empathy jolts running into her brain. The metaphorical ants were swarming again.

What could've caused Twilight's pain? Was she tired and over-taxing her magic? That seemed unlikely, Twilight had more magic than just about anypony. Maybe her horn was damaged? That would certainly explain it. Trixie found herself nibbling the edge of one hoof.

No, Twilight's horn appeared undamaged. That wasn't the explanation, so what was?

Blocked, a whisper floated through her mind. The magic is being blocked.

Trixie blinked and frowned. That did make sense. Too much sense, in fact. She hadn't even wondered, on seeing Starlight, why her friend didn't teleport away. Somehow, she'd known it wouldn't work, just like she'd known not to use her own magic before.

“What is happening?” Trixie whimpered out loud.

Almost thankfully, nothing answered. Trixie looked into Starlight's cell again, and jumped back, surprised. For a moment, she thought Starlight was really looking at her. Their eyes locked perfectly. But then the other unicorn sighed and turned away. Trixie felt a piece inside of her tumble into the void, some chunk she wasn't even aware of until it was gone. And once it was gone the absence hurt way worse than anything else. She couldn't stand the look in Starlight's eyes- resignation. Hopelessness.

Trixie didn't feel hopeless. Truthfully, she wasn't a hundred percent sure what she was feeling, but she knew it wasn't that. It was more... anticipation. Something awful was going to happen soon. It was the same feeling, the same ants-in-the-skull tingling that she'd had since waking up.

A glance at Twilight only made the feeling worse. For just a moment, Twilight was replaced by a different pony- no, many different ponies. Some Trixie knew well, others not as much. A school teacher, Applejack's brother, that Maud pony, Sunburst... All of them superimposed over Twilight. Pain swept through her brain. And then Trixie blinked, and the images disappeared, and she could breath again. Mostly.

She was trembling now. Her hooves shaking, her tail twitching. Trixie scanned her little observation chamber. She needed something, anything, to break the glass. She had to get them out of there. But there was nothing she could use.

The only thing she could see, something she hadn't noticed when she walked in, was a lever in the wall. Or had she noticed it, and ignored it? Trixie shook her head. Her memories seemed to be getting less clear the more time she spent in here. But it didn't matter. The lever was there, and the lever did something. It seemed to much to ask for that it would simply get rid of the glass and open a passage out of this strange place.

Yes, too much.

Trixie cantered up to the lever, unsure. She appraised it carefully. The lever design was simple and standard. Nothing special. It wasn't attached to any tripwires, meaning any trap would be triggered by the lever itself, which would be pointless. She hesitantly gave it a wiggle.

Instantly, bells started tolling in her head. Big, thundering bells that made her feel tiny and weak-kneed. Trixie backed away from the lever. It was a bad thing- that was all she could think. A simple and childish thought, which she was perfectly okay with. The lever was dangerous.

She turned back to the windows. Surely there was some way to break them. They were just glass after all.

And then she noticed Starlight staring at the ceiling. No- at the ceiling vents. Why would Starlight be staring at the vents? And with such intensity- like they were the most interesting thing she'd seen all day. An idea flitted between Trixie's neurons. She looked over at Twilight. Twilight, too, was staring upwards.

The lever.

Trixie wiggled the lever again, ignoring her internal alarm. She stood next to it and watched the rooms as best as she could. Twilight and Starlight stretched the muzzles up, wide eyed. Each wiggle of the lever produced a reaction, and after a few tries, Trixie decided she was right. The lever controlled the vents. The dangerous lever that scared the ju-ju out of her was connected to the unsettlingly inappropriate vents.

Why, though?

Trixie shifted away from the lever for a moment. Why have a lever that controlled the vents? Why put it in this particular room? Why was this place designed the way that it was?

Questions ping-ponged back and forth in her mind until Trixie couldn't stand it. She couldn't come up with the answers, even though she felt like she should know them. Or at the very least, she should be able to figure them out.

Frustrated, Trixie walked over to Starlight's window. She wished the glass wasn't sound-proof, so that she could at least talk to her friend. For years Trixie had been alone. No pony cared about her, no pony wanted her around. There was no pony she could talk to. And now Starlight, the pony who changed that, was so close, and they couldn't even communicate.

A noise caught her attention- the grinding of gears. Factory sounds, like the kind that echoed out of Prancesylvania's old steel mills. Trixie spun back to the lever, which was moving all on its own. It crunched downward until the handle pointed to the floor. And then it stayed there.

What?

Trixie glanced at the windows, then at the lever, feeling like her innards were being sucked away. This was wrong. It shouldn't have been happening. And yet- and yet...

Trixie sucked in a rattling breath. Things kept flashing in her brain, horrible things- nightmares. They must've been nightmares, because if they were real... No, no she couldn't accept that. But they kept happening, repeating. Ponies, those same ponies, sitting where Twilight sat, looking up in curiosity. And each one got a face full of-

“NO!” Trixie startled herself by shouting. She rushed at the glass, pressing her muzzle against it, straining to see inside Twilight's room. She looked at the vent, looking for any sign of what she thought was coming. But she didn't see it. There was nothing.

No pink mist.

Trixie blinked. She was so sure...

The lever controls both vents, her mind whispered. Trixie shuddered and leaped for the other window, for once in her life hoping she was wrong, hoping she wouldn't see the pink-

Oh. Oh no.

Trixie choked on her next inhale. It was faint, but she could see it. The wisps of pink shimmering down from the vent. The gas making its way into Starlight's chamber.

The lever controlled both vents...

Trixie turned and grabbed the lever with both hooves and heaved upwards. In clunked heavily into place, but she didn't feel any relief.

Trixie turned back, a full circle, and watched both vents carefully. Starlight's was closed. A few particles of pink floated around, but it was nothing.

Twilight's, on the other hoof, was open fully. And waves of pink were reaching down.

The alicorn stared up at the gas with equal parts fascination and apprehension. Trixie watched her wave a hoof through the nearest wisp, only for it to fly into her face on the wake. Twilight instantly began coughing, her whole body racked by the irritation. The princess shrank into a corner, all fascination gone.

Trixie swallowed.

She felt empty, so very empty. This was exactly what she'd been afraid of, exactly what she'd seen in her head. In her memories.

Now she had a choice to make.

Trixie placed a hoof on the lever.

On the one hoof. Starlight Glimmer, her best friend. Her only friend, it seemed. Especially if those flashes really were memories.

On the other hoof, Princess Twilight, defender of Equestria, Element of Magic, and all around do-gooder. So many ponies depended on her, for so many reasons. And Trixie owed her new station in life in part to Twilight- the former unicorn had pushed her onto the path to being a better pony. She might not be Trixie's friend, but there was something there. Something important.

Her hoof trembled on the lever.

But at the same time, Starlight. The name brought up so much. So many feelings, so many memories. It wasn't always smooth- sometimes being Starlight's friend meant risking her life to save the world. Sometimes it meant getting yelled at and feeling like a failure. But there was no pony Trixie trusted more, no pony she'd rather have by her side.

The trembling stopped.

Twilight would understand, right? After all, she was the Princess of Friendship. Saving each other was what friends did, even if the cost was high. Really high. 'Throwing away Equestria for a friend' high.

Oh no.

Trixie sobbed. This- this was too much. She couldn't- there had to be another way. She couldn't lose Starlight, but Equestria needed its princess. Maybe... maybe if she pushed the lever just-so...?

Trixie pulled down, slowly, feeling each gear click. She stopped about halfway. There. That should've done it, right?

She looked back and yelped. Pink mist was emerging from both vents now!

Trixie pushed the lever down quickly. The flow into Twilight's chamber stopped. That going into Starlight's sped up. Trixie shivered and whimpered.

Three inches of gas swirled around the bottom of Twilight's room. The alicorn had climbed onto the stone cot, and looked at the pink morass with wild eyes.

But now Starlight was standing in it. And she was coughing, hard. She tried to inhale and choked, and then a wave of red cascaded out her mouth. The bloody vomit splattered across the floor.

Trixie felt like her bones were cracking from her own muscles tensing.

She didn't-

She couldn't-

She made her choice.

Trixie pushed the lever up. Trixie turned around. And Trixie felt her mind splinter into a billion shards...

The school teacher- Cheerleader, or something- inhaled the pink gas. She dropped down, coughing, but the gas followed. It pooled around her, filling the room, and before long the coughs turned into rasps, the rasps into choking spasms. And the spasms into bloody stillness...

Trixie had seen Big Macintosh around the farm, whenever she set up her practice stage. He was a handsome stallion, and very polite, though he seemed a bit cross with her. Probably because of how she'd humiliated his sister once. Still, he was usually so strong.

He wasn't strong anymore.

Trixie watched him scrape his hooves down his throat, pleading with the world for one last breath of air, before finally his tongue flopped out and his eyes turned to glass...

Maud was always so serious. So emotionless. She'd been that way on the rock farm, and she'd been that way in Ponyville. But now, lying on the floor of a strange stone chamber gasping for air, she expressed herself fully. Trixie watched the tears flow out of her eyes, and her lips call out to other ponies. To her sisters, perhaps, or maybe even to her friend Starlight, or maybe just to her pet Boulder...

Sunburst slammed into the glass, his hooves flailing. The slam was weaker than before, and the next one would be weaker still as he ran out of breath, but he wasn't giving up. He yelled, silent to Trixie, but he was obviously calling for help. Help that would never come...

Trixie gasped, feeling her own tears splattering on the ground now. She remembered, almost everything. All the others. All the- the tests. And now this one. Her stomach shook, rematerializing from the void in an effort to toss out its contents, even though it was empty.

Starlight had been there. She'd been there each time, and each time she'd say-

“Thank you!”

Trixie ignored her, and the words that felt like a knife to her brain. Little half-breaths wheezed through her parted lips, her squeezing guts making it almost impossible to inhale. It almost felt like she was the one that was poisoned.

“Trixie?”

She turned.

The glass was gone from Starlight's window, like it had never been there. Starlight stood between the room and Trixie. Her muzzle was still covered in red. “I wasn't sure you would be able to do it,” Starlight admitted.

Trixie flinched away, pushing herself into the wall. “Why not?” she whimpered. “I did it before.”

“You- you what?” Starlight had the audacity to look confused.

“I killed for you!” Trixie wailed. She stamped a hoof and tried to keep from bursting into tears again. Her eyes still burned from a moment ago. “Over and over again, right here!”

“Oh.” Starlight's face contorted with grotesque indecisiveness. But then her expression relaxed. Her eyes hollowed out, and what was left was as cold and waxen as a sculpture. “So... you remember.”

Trixie nodded, slowly and deliberately. Her back ached where it pressed into the base of the wall.

“Well that's not supposed to happen,” Starlight muttered. She reached up and wiped the fake blood off her muzzle. “So what now?”

“You tell me,” Trixie spat. “This is all your stage.”

“True,” Starlight nodded. Her expression, still distant, turned thoughtful. “I suppose the most important thing would be to make you forget again. I have all the information I need, anyway.”

“Information! Twilight's dead.”

“Is that why you're looking like that?” Starlight chuckled. “Twilight is fine.”

“No she isn't!” Trixie pointed into the other room. “I just watched her- watched her...” Her protest fell flat as she watched Twilight get up. The alicorn shook her head, and then blinked- and then disappeared in a flash of blue fire. In her place stood a pony-sized figure with a brilliantly colored carapace.

“Hi,” the changeling said awkwardly.

It had been a trick, she realized. All of it, it had all just been an illusion. Starlight had tricked her. But...

“Why?”

The single, croaked word drew a line between them. It was ionizing, electrifying, a live wire that could burn anypony who touched it.

But Starlight just shook her head. “It doesn't matter,” she said. “You won't remember anyway.”

Starlight leaned forward, her horn glowing. The spell lanced forward like a striking serpent. Trixie felt it wrap around her brain and pull. It tugged at her memories, trying to grab hold of everything about this hell she'd woken up in. Trixie felt the newer memories peel away, like a scab, until only the tiniest bit of metaphorical mind-flesh held them in place. The spell tugged harder, a sweet sort of pain pulsing outward. And at the same time, it reached under the scab, to what was now exposed, to the splinters of old memories. It plucked at those splinters, too. A fog of forgetfulness began to spread, numbing the pain.

No.

The splinters twisted, like trees putting down new roots. The spell yanked even harder, but then the new memories took hold, too. Her mind slammed shut with a fiery flare. Trixie heard Starlight yelp, and the spell fizzled out.

It took a moment for the outside world to come back. Once it did, it was another moment before Trixie managed to find her hooves and stand. Even then, her legs were wobbly. Her whole body ached.

Starlight didn't look much better than Trixie felt. She held her forehead with one hoof and stumbled around the room. Trixie couldn't help taking some satisfaction in that.

But more important than satisfaction was the venom filling up her throat. Trixie reared up and stomped with all her -rather considerable- strength. “Why!” she hissed again.

Starlight just shook her head. “I had to know for sure. You'd have done the same thing if you'd thought of it!”

“Know what? Thought of what?”

“W-was I really your best friend?”

The question hit like a slap. “That's your reason?” Trixie recoiled. “You abducted me! Erased my memories! You- you made me think I'd killed ponies! All because you weren't sure we were friends?”

“Best friends,” Starlight corrected her. Then winced. “Look, I- Trixie, you know I wouldn't actually hurt ponies.”

“You hurt me.”

Starlight blinked. “I- I didn't mean to,” she murmured.

“Well, you did.” Trixie sniffed. Her eyes were starting to water again. “And I don't understand it. We've been through so much together! How could you all of a sudden just start doubting us?”

“It wasn't exactly sudden...” Starlight coughed into her hoof. “I- I guess the malfunctioning spell, recovering your memories the way you did, it would be hard to... We've been doing this a while, let's just go with that.”

“You mean you've been doing it a while. To me.” Starlight didn't deny the accusation. Trixie felt something inside her just... shatter, in response. “I- I can't be here anymore.”

“Trixie-”

“Get me out of here!”

It was Starlight's turn to flinch away. Wetness glistened under her eyes. “I- okay. The way out is- is over here.”

Starlight shuffled back into her former 'prison'. Just inside, out of Trixie's sight, was a door. Starlight pulled it open with her magic, revealing a set of stairs winding upward. Of course they were underground. Trixie took a deep breath and started up.

“Trixie?” Starlight called after her. She paused, one hoof hovering above the next step. “We- we'll get through this. Right?”

Trixie hesitated. Her hoof shook- no, her whole body was shivering. Just the tiniest consideration, the smallest bit of non-action, gave her a headache. Every blink brought up images of twisted corpses. Fake death, and yet...

“I don't know, Starlight,” Trixie murmured. She trudged up the steps, back to where things made sense. “I don't know...”

Author's Note

Suddenly felt the need to add this:
To anyone who is not a fan of Starlight but read this story story anyway, I adore her. I really do. I wrote this as something of a deconstruction of the StarTrix ship (which I consider canon). Please try to keep the comment hate to a minimum (agreeing that this is in character for Starlight is borderline, I had to put in the part about her doing it for a while because as of the beginning of season 7, it would feel OOC of her to start torturing her best friend).