A Tale of Two Monsters (Sample)

Hidden by the sharply carved oak door engraved with the name Director Silk Sway was an office kept immaculately clean, even behind shelves that we're packed with favored hardcover books. The carpet was as green as healthy grass, appropriately leading into the lush plains and mountains painted along the bottoms of the walls. Atop of them and snow coated peaks, a brilliantly blue sky speckled with swirls of clouds that stretched all the way up into the ceiling above. There, in the very center, a shining symbol of Celestia hung as a delicately crafted chandelier.

Though somewhat confusing to one's circadian rhythm, the atmosphere always brought a sense of comfort and familiarity as the imagery matched well with the world just outside the thick castle-like walls of the factory.

Centered at the opposite end of the room from the oak wood door sat a mahogany wood desk with ever more care to its very carving. Behind it, within her pure white cushion-clad office chair, sat the director herself. Just like the office from before, this time amidst a plethora of framed achievements and paintings, there was a section of wall dedicated to a stack of monitors to the right side of the desk. It had captured Silk’s attention. She slipped on two faux leather gloves in preparation before patiently waiting for her office door to inevitably come crashing open.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Rainbow Dash shouted as she stormed onward. Before Silk was even half way around her desk, Rainbow was well before the director as her voice filled the room. “You brought Pinkie Pie here?! Pinkie Pie?!”

“Stop,” Silk harshly commanded with her hoof placed before Rainbow’s face as it was coming uncomfortably close. If it wasn't the command that stopped Rainbow in her tracks, it was the startling pop of electricity from the gleaming metal shoe attached to the gloves Silk wore.

Rainbow, briefly stiff, eyed the weapon before her. It was known as a stun glove. It wasn't very powerful in terms of voltage output, but it was easy to use albeit expensive to obtain.

“Take a seat,” Silk instructed as she gestured to the shiny ruby red couch to the right of her desk. Though the stun glove remained primed, Silk’s voice slipped into a more calming cadence. “Breath deeply and calm yourself, I will explain everything.” The standoff continued for a solid eight seconds before Rainbow grunted and her flank landed on red cushions. Silk’s own resting on her white ones.

“As you know,” Silk began, “for our sessions I'd usually start with asking how you are feeling today. But from the look on your face I’d say — and please correct me if I’m wrong, you currently want to force feed me that entire couch, correct?”

“How'd you guess?” Rainbow hissed.

“Very understandable, but it's interesting that you’d even share that,” Silk nodded along as she cracked open a notebook that was no stranger to the name Rainbow Dash. All the while the corner of her eye catching the monitors. The security team seemed to be wrapping up a rather delightful chat with the officers who were passing off the prisoner. Rainbow, however, couldn't so easily turn her head and stared almost unblinking at the single screen that watched the group.

“These days,” Silk continued, “ each time I ask “how you are doing” you look at me wearily and tell me you're fine. I hear of you throwing tantrums, hitting this and that, yet you tell me “It's nothing.” I see you suffering from panic attacks and then play it off as if still nothing happened. It doesn't matter what methods I try, be it acupuncture, drugs, hypnosis, or massage therapy,” Silk paused, watching Rainbow lean back against and glanced away rather uncomfortably. “You are nearly never honest. Practically all of our achievement here in getting your issues straightened out have been mainly earned through ten years of educated guess work. For a long while, I thought my proteges were just incompetent! Turns out you are the single most difficult case I have ever dealt with, but luckily for you, I do enjoy a challenge.”

“But all that praise from before,” Rainbow interjected.

“Half hollow victories in my eyes.” Silk said as she tapped the inky tip of her feathered pen on a blank page. “Cured as you might be… how are the nightmares?”

Rainbow sank into the couch as if it were swallowing her.

“I thought so.” Finally, that pen began to busily sway. “You’ve made me a bit desperate here, Miss Dash. I’m left with no choice but to make you face the thing you fear the most in order to overcome it.”

Rainbow watched the various security feeds, spying on the small squad of guards as they pushed the loaded dolly through the halls. Once they vanished from on screen, it would take awhile for them to appear in another. Rainbow resisted the urge to take control and flip the channels to monitor every step of theirs like a hawk. She just slumped further into her seat, eyes ahead. A grim sense of foreboding creeping through her body ever more as she witnessed the prisoner being pushed oh so slowly into the bowels of what Rainbow once thought of as a sanctuary. Her skin crawled with the feeling of being violated all over again.

“She will be working here,” Silk commented, having too taken to watching the glowing screens periodically. “But don't fret too much. She is not free to roam. I’m certain you've curiously poked your head into the newly reconstructed Main Filter Chamber at one point or another. That will be her new quarters; her new cell.”

Rainbow thought back to the last time she had looked inside that room, having assumed the shower and sink she had spotted to be some sort of emergency station to wash away chemicals or clean equipment; like the one like she had seen in the labs of Sector Three. What had perplexed her at the time was what seemed to be a toilet from the angle she had seen it at, yet she had forgotten to ask about it at the time. There was no sign of a bed, but there likely was now if what she was told was true. When she looked for the room on stack of monitors… there it was. At least so she thought. Could only see a portion of the room, mainly the door and the bare corners to its sides.

“You turned an entire work room into a cell?” Rainbow asked offended by the very idea.

“Mm-hm.” Silk nodded and focused towards her scribbled notes.

“All of this for me? For a test?” Rainbow asked of, including the effort in obtaining a dangerous criminal from the very depths of Tartarus; a risk and an adventure in and of itself.

“No.” The answer came blunt riding on soft tones, leaving Rainbow confused enough to look Silk's way, meeting her direct gaze. What anger that boiled within Rainbow when she had stomped her way into the room had since cooled enough to peek her curiosity.

“I wouldn't get a full head about it, Miss Dash. She’s here for reasons that don't just revolve around you. For one, we need somepony to work that rather nasty room who wouldn't end up likely killing herself... unlike the many before her. Two, and this is very crucial, I need to study her. Pick her brain, see what I can find.”

“I don't think you're gonna like what you find and if you find… whatever it is, what the hell do you have to gain?”

“I think we’re going to have to pause this chat for a moment,” said Silk pointing to the screen showing the insides of Pinkie’s cell, albeit just a portion. Silk soon remedied that by pressing a several buttons on slick black keypad resting on the left hand edge of the desk. Three other monitors flickered showing that the cell was covered corner to corner by watchful eyes. There indeed was now a bed; a shoddy looking one that a cell deserves, though still too good for the likes of this particular prisoner.

The metal door, with a beep, slid to the side and allowed the group to push their prisoner right in. Up until that point the guards had seemed rather relaxed. Not exactly nonchalant, but not all that stressed either. To them, it was just an odd job to handle. This quickly changed when the four arrived at their destination with the dolly-bound mare where they seemed to just now realize that the dangerous psychopath would have to now be set free. The room seemed to grow tense.

Their faces told well that they’ve heard horrible tales about the prisoner; stories likely fabricated and told around campfires, but nonetheless stomach turning. Quite a number of ponies across the land thought the mare was a mythical monster with many names: The Bloody Baker. Cupcake Killer. Sweet Slayer. But there she was in the flesh, blood, and brilliantly pink coat of fur, silently staring back at them. She seemed calm, even pleased with a small hidden smile. Her wondrous and big sky-blue eyes looking to them as if she were a child delightfully captivated by a cartoon show, but there was no telling what plans might be brewing behind those glassy orbs. Then the guards in unison pointed their attention to the only one carrying a set of keys that remained rather still in his hooves.

Silk, removed from the events unfolding as she calmly pulled up a mic on her desk and spoke to the guards.

“Go on.”

The keymaster looked up to one of the cameras, giving it a brief salute. His voice came clear through the surround sound system in the office. “Yes, boss.” The remaining three readied their weapons, two rifles and one stun baton, expecting the situation to turn bloody at any second. With a few clicks, a clang, a zip and some snaps… Pinkie Pie was free. Lumbering off the dolly on stiff legs, she stopped and slowly… oh so slowly, looked around again. She then shot a sudden glance over her shoulder to the key holder and pointed to her muzzle. It was still on.

“Do it,” Silk commanded from afar.

The stallion swallowed the lump in his throat. He took cautious steps, acting as if he was facing a dragon that would devour him whole the moment the last restraint slipped away. With ease it was unlocked, and it fell with a loud thud. The guard was quick to retreat a healthy distance from the threat.

Pinkie Pie slowly shifted her jaw and rolled her neck, relieved by her freedom of movement. She breathed deeply, filling her lungs to the brim with the stale factory air before she lunged forth onto her forehooves and shouted as loud as she could, “boo!”

The guards went tense with a jolt, one yelping and squeezing his trigger. His gun popped off with an ear-piercing shot that zipped right by the keymaster’s own face, the dart pinging off a wall and falling to the floor. For a second, everyone in the room went still.

Then, shaking in a fit of laughter Pinkie hit the floor; her legs playfully kicking into the air as she giggled. The sounds she made poured into Silk’s office through the speakers all around, accompanied by a very faint crackle.

“Oh my goodness,” she spoke between her giggle fits, “you guys are sooo tense!” Her laughter was rather contagious as several other guards nervously chuckled, all watching as the trigger-happy stallion shamefully shuffle off to reclaim the misfired dart. “It’s not like I bite or anything,” Pinkie hollered then suddenly paused, “Oh wait… I do!” That statement quickly snuffed out any amusement in the guards as her own laughter washed over them.

Rainbow glared. It wasn’t just the high-pitched squealing of glee that scraped a few nerves, nor the disturbing fact that Pinkie was still alive after all these years… but what really made Rainbow angry was seeing how Pinkie seemed not at all different from before her imprisonment. It was as if her years in Tartarus had been nothing more than a short vacation for the mare.

Having been dismissed by the director the guards were all too eager to leave Pinkie to her locked cell. She openly ogled at her new accommodations before looking upwards for whoever spoke. “Well, at least I have you, strange voice!”

“Hello, Miss Pie and welcome to your new home.” Silk sounded far too legitimately delighted with that mic to her up-curled lips. To Rainbow, it truly betrayed the sympathetic sounding tone that she was practically spoon-fed before. Thus her present glare ever so slightly sharpened.

Pinkie had gasped, eyes growing big, her voice still rushing through the speaker system like punches to Rainbow’s ears. “My own new room? And it’s a talking room?!”

Rainbow scoffed. “What a retar—” Like a child that had spoken out of turn she was immediately hushed. Her brow twitched slightly in annoyance.

With the riffer’s silence assured, the director clicked the mic back on and answered. “No, you’re not that fortunate today. I am Director Silk, one of the several ponies in charge of this facility and your new warden. I hope you’d be pleased to know that we are going to have plenty of time to get to know one another, but for now, I suggest you get to know your new cell. I will be back soon.”

Pinkie wandered off further into the room as Silk set aside her mic, making doubly sure it was off.

“Hushing me? Really?” Said Rainbow, “what are you, my mother?”

“I Sometimes ask myself that,” said Silk as she returned to taking notes. It was quite obvious that notebook was about to become even more familiar with the name Pinkie Pie. “But really, you’re not to say a word to her. She will not even see you. I don’t want her to know that you’re here, not yet. I need to study Miss Pie in her current state. Having a former victim of hers suddenly turning up could be like dangling a steak before a lion who didn’t even know it was hungry.”

“Fine by me.” Rainbow huffed. “Not like I was eager for her to even be here in the first place. Now, I think it’s time for you to tell me just what the hell this study really is.”

“Well, I could go into the lofty dream of setting her mind straight like others have tried before she was sent off to Tartarus… but that I have no real hope for. Her mind seems to have been cracked beyond repair.”

“So….” Rainbow impatiently rolled a hoof, urging the director onward.

“Miss Dash, how many workers have committed suicide in the years you have worked here? How many cracked workers have we had to silence due to the threat of them trying to expose us? How many runaways have our teams had to hunt?”

Rainbow actually gave these troubling questions a fair bit of thought. It was rather common to come into work with a familiar face missing for one reason or another. It always carried a trickle effect too: one pony kills himself, a close worker friend often follows suit. As Rainbow dwelled on this her attention didn’t stray far from Silk.

“I have all kinds of helpful procedures and pills to soften these blows; to help our ponies understand the good of our gruesome work. But it’s never enough. Nearly everypony has their second thoughts. Nearly everypony cracks.” She said grimly before pointing at the screens. “That’s why we need a nutcase like her. Or more of, that’s why I need a nutcase like her.”

“But—” Rainbow began.

“I know, we have quite a few crackpots who’ve stayed with us for a while… and you’re pretty much at the top of the bunch. But none of you are on that level.”

They both paused and had to stare at the monitors that showed Pinkie licking the grimy flap to the incinerator chute, which was honestly no better than licking the edge of a trash can. They didn’t speak a word of it, just shared a shudder before Silk continued. “Not only is she proud of her dark work of gutting and skinning, she eats the meat too.” Silk carefully eyed Rainbow as she used these words with a touch of caution in her tone. She could practically see the memories that Rainbow was trying to supress. “I am not sure how aware you are of this, Miss Dash, but… we equin are herbivores. The very thought of eating meat should have our stomachs squeezing in on themselves. The attempted digestion of such things should end with us spewing.

“Miss Pie, on the other hoof, is so committed to her twisted mind that she somehow defied her very biological instinct and showed no sign of physical illness even after all the ponies that she had sampled. I want to tap into that part of her brain. I want to see what gives her that sort of iron stomach in hopes of taking what I learn into mentally reinforcing our workers with stronger wills. If all goes well, that’ll be a great reward for us all. But either way, if I win or fail, you yourself still get a rather special reward; granted that you don’t fall out of line.”

“I get a spot as a director.”

“You get to kill her,” Silk corrected with a rather devious smirk. “In whatever way pleases you. However you handle all of this is simply going to be taken into consideration when deciding if you are truly director material.”

Though the title of Director Rainbow did have a nice ring to it, the tempting thought of Pinkie’s upsetting existence resting in her hooves was more fetching to Rainbow than the scent of a freshly cooked meal of the highest class. She even licked her lips a bit. “I… get to kill her?”

Silk let the softest of laughs pass her nose. “Do I really need to repeat myself? You’ve spouted all that hogwash about how you ‘forgave’ Pinkie numerous times, yet, I see you here now practically salivating at the thought of revenge.”

“This isn’t revenge,” Rainbow instantly corrected. “This is justice. It’s completely different.”

“Uh-huh.” Silk nodded, looking more than a bit unimpressed.

“Besides,” Rainbow quickly added, after shifting her eyes, “a big part of our factory thing is to get rid of bad genes, right? Then what’s more bad than one of the most notorious equine killers in all of Equestria?”

“Well, however you want to look at this, it doesn’t matter. Not right now. With all of this in mind… I now ask once more as I am curious to know: how are you feeling today?” Now sounding quite pleased in how the once heated meeting had turned, Silk folded her hooves together and displayed a small smile.

A storm of ideas had entered Rainbow’s mind, tantalising her as to how she would want to dispose of the pink menace. Chopping off limbs? Setting her on fire? Chopping off limbs and then setting her on fire? This dealing of justice was going to take some thought. But what she didn’t have to think about was her answer for Silk. “Pretty good now,” is what she wanted to say. But didn’t. Instead, she eyed the four monitors focused on the cell and said, “where did Pinkie go?” Rainbow got up and approached the set of TVs.

Silk raised a curious brow as well seeing no Pinkie on the monitors. The camera controls back in her hooves, she remotely adjusted one after another, panning them around whatever little bits of the room they didn’t already have an eye on. Suddenly, a bright big blue eyeball popped right up to stare into a camera lens, nearly scaring the soul out of Rainbow and causing her to take a step back.

“Camera’s… here?!” That eyeball pulled back, showing off the overly excited face it was attached to. “Please tell me we are gonna do some reality television stuff! I already feel like a star now!”

“How did she get up there,” asked Silk.

Rainbow didn’t answer; not that she had an answer to begin with. She instead did her best to breath deep once more, trying to cool the panic within her narrowed eyes. She looked to her fore hooves. They were shaking. She filled her lungs once more with the will to turn away from the security feed to Silk. “I’ve been hanging out here long enough. Think it’s about time I get back to my duties. Still got a bit of prep left for tonight’s shipment. After all, it’s not gonna purge itself.”

“Very well,” Silk didn’t speak up again until the manager had nearly reached the door. “Rainbow Dash, if you succeed here, blue skies ahead. If you don't….”

“I know. I won’t let you down.”