Rarity's Colt: Snickers's Harmony Trials

I blinked brightness from my eyes and was back in the Club House, also known as CMC HQ. I didn’t know how I got here; especially since it’s almost half an hour trot, but I was sure it had to do with something fucked up, magical, and probably Twilight related.

“Snickers? What’re you doing here?” Sweetie Belle asked from behind me, getting a startled yelp from me.

“Don’t scare me like that!” I told her and put a hoof to my chest. “What are you doing here? I was in Twilight’s library tree house thing. I thought you were at school.”

“I am, er... was,” Sweetie touched the side of her head, “I was in class and got a horn ache.”

“A… horn ache? You mean a headache?” I asked.

“No, it’s something unicorns have that’s different. When we get a headache, it’s like a headache; but a horn ache is a headache that starts from our horn and along the thaumic nerves into our brains, then pulses like a headache. It’s worse because it’s like a migraine,” she tapped her horn carefully, “but any touch to our horn can hurt really bad.”

She tapped the rounded point a few times and sighed. “So, you’re fine then?” I asked her and moved closer as she nodded. “Good, so how’d you get from school and me from Twilight’s, to here?”

She shrugged. “I’unno. Maybe we blacked out and Scootaloo and Apple Bloom brought us here to recover… yeah, that sounds dumb just thinking it.” Sweetie said when I looked at her incredulously.

“Okay, let’s just get back to Twilight’s. There’s something she’s gotta answer for after this fuck up.” I grimaced after I said it and knew I lost another bit before I’d even earned one.

Sweetie put a hoof on my side. “It’s okay. I won’t tell this time. This is kinda messed up, but if anypony can fix it, Twilight can.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, after she causes it. Well, ladies first,” I said gesturing to the door.

“Aren’t you going to open it, like a true gentlecolt would for a lady?”

I made a show of prancing to the door, bit the handle, and gave a twist of my head with a pull. Sweetie gasped and I let the door go to see what was up.

“God damned fucking ass! What the fuck does Harmony have against me? Seriously?!” I shouted into the deep dark forested area we were in.

“Snickers, calm down. How do you know this has anything to do with Harmony?” She pointed out the door into the encompassing darkness that was out of some ancient horror movie.

I looked at her with wide eyes and pointed to the lecturn the girls would stand at and start their meetings. I was going to on Thursday, if we survived this. “Let’s see. Bright, comfortable, nice place here with sunlight lighting the room through the shuttered windows, or a dark nightmare scene out the door.

“This is the kinda shit that magic would do to try to teach me why being part of the pony herd is the best choice.”

Sweetie stepped closer and gave me a hug. “It’s okay. We don’t have to go out there, we can just wait until we get rescued.”

I hugged her back. “You just doomed us,” I mumbled.

She let me go and stepped back. “Well, if you don’t want a hug just say so.”

“Three. Two. One.” I counted, and right on time the clubhouse started to shake and the back tilted up spilling us, and only us; none of the furniture or papers, out the door. We tumbled over one another and stopped, looking back to the wonderful sight of a nightmare tree just existing to look menacing.

“Why’d you do that?! It wouldn’t have kicked us out if you didn’t count it down.” Sweetie huffed and puffed in a really cute way.

I shrugged. “It was gonna happen, I just guessed right.”

“Ugh. Ugh! Now we’re really stuck here, what do we have to do to get home? Huh?” She turned in a circle looking for any landmarks past the grey area circled with demon trees we were standing at.

“I don’t have a clue. Maybe follow the yellow brick road?” I joked. I realized the joke was lost and never to be found when Sweetie started looking and poking at the ground asking where I saw the road. “Look, it’s a line from a movie a hundred years old where I’m from. Or, probably more. Regardless, we have to pick a path,” I pointed past the tree of death curving to the left that our safety house had been by, and then down another path that curved to the left.

“Um… well, I’m left hoofed so maybe we should go that way.”

I looked at Sweetie. “Really? I honestly had no idea, isn’t that rare?”

Sweetie looked at the path we were going to take. “Probably, it’s not that important so I’ve never asked, but I don’t see anypony else using their left for stuff as much as me.”

“Meh, it’s no big deal. I’ll take the lead so anything that attacks us from behind can nibble on your dust when you run past me and leave me for dinner,” I teased the surprisingly fast filly and brushed my tail on her foreleg in a way I’d learned meant ‘come on’ and was, thankfully, not a come on.

“That isn’t funny. I don’t want either of us getting hurt, so why don’t we walk side by side. Maybe we’ll get to Zecora’s and she can help us get home.”

I couldn’t help but bite back. “Sure, the first living person we’re gonna meet is the one to help us home.”

“You don’t have to be so negative about this, nephew. We’re gonna get home and nothing bad will happen to either of us. Just wait and see, we’re gonna be fine.”

I had learned how to walk on three legs so I can use one of my forelegs to perform another task, which I did just then. I tapped my chin and counted. “Hm… one, two, three… maybe four, I think.”

“What’re you counting? Are they landmarks? Do you see anything helpful?” Sweetie asked.

I shook my head and hummed. “Nope, just counting how many times you’ve said words that will probably bring death upon us both and have us be feasted upon by ravenous--”

“Stop it!” Sweetie turned and shouted at me. I stumbled over my own legs and fell over when I saw how mad she was. “You don’t have to keep saying such mean and scary and hurtful things, okay? You don’t have to, but you still do. Why? What’s so bad about this walk so far?” She pointed back and the area we’d left was still within view.

She turned her foreleg and pointed at me, making me feel smaller than her. “I’m scared and I don’t wanna be here. The Everfree Forest is a horrible place for a pony because we’re prey,” she looked around cautiously, “and I can’t use magic yet and don’t wanna be food for some predator.

“So can you please act like a big colt and walk with me and keep me safe and close so I’m so so much scared and stop scaring me?” She started strong and whittled down to a whimper.

I saw the hurt and fear in her eyes so I got up and rushed to stand with my side against hers. “Okay, I’m sorry for being such a downer. I totally get where you’re coming from, Sweetie, okay?”

Sweetie looked back and then at me. “Yeah, you just came from there too.”

I blinked and it took a second before I felt much better about the scene we were in. Her innocence is just what I needed. “Exactly, we’re together in this, so let’s get out of this together.”

We started to walk and three steps ahead we fell into a pit trap. “Ah, ha ha ha, boys. What’ve we got here?” A stallion called down to us while the leaves and dirt were still raining on us. “A couple little bites that’ll get us a hefty ransom, is what I see.”

Two others peeked their heads over the rim and looked down at us. One of them got a rock to the head that had slipped onto my hoof. He staggered back while the others laughed at him. “Ha, one of ‘em got ya good!”

Sweetie groaned and stood up, shaking off the detritus before I did and was the first they saw. One of them wolf whistled. “I call dibs!”

“Shut it, we ain’t thinkin’ of that crap. We’re here ta get bits ta spend, not yer bits wet.”

The one I beaned with the rock looked down at us with one hoof over his eye and a sneer on his face that I really didn’t like on him. I was almost up and scooped another rock, bigger this time, into my hoof. “Whoever threw that rock is gonna get their flank whipped! When I--” the next rock nailed him right in the mouth and he fell out of view of us again.

“Snickers,” Sweetie whispered at me, “stop doing that! You’re gonna get them to hurt us.”

“Jeepers?! Bro, oh no… yer bleedin’ somethin’ fierce. I think he busted yer snout.”

“My teef…” the one I nailed twice in a row hissed through his broken face. He started crying like a bitch, it was a great feeling.

“Let us out, jerk wads, or I’ll bean your dumb faces until you do,” I dug around and didn’t find any more rocks, realizing that the ones I had were probably random and fell when they were digging the hole. I knew a geologist once and learned a lot about sediment and the like, also that rocks are really common, but not constant.

I looked at the walls of the pit in the dim light we had that came from everywhere but above the trees and didn’t see anything else. Two muzzles fell into the pit. “Put those on, kiddies. When you’re muzzled we’ll let you up.”

Sweetie and I looked back and forth between each other and the muzzles and shared a look. “We don’t know how to put these on. We’re foals.”

There was a silence that I could have laughed at. “Fine,” the apparent leader stallion sait, “I’m sending down a harness you slip on. We’ll haul you up and then muzzle you ourselves,” he said and dropped a rope with a harness attached.

“Peepers, Jeepers is gonna make it, but he’s really messed up. Ma’s gonna be really mad if she sees him like this.”

I listened as the two talked above us and turned to face Sweetie. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but don’t worry. We can get outta this, they’re morons.” Sweetie gave me a hug and I stepped back with my tail bumping into the wall. I knelt down and got the harness on. “Okay, pull me up.”

There was a violent tug that hurt and winded me, a second later I was looking down on two of them and falling back to the very unforgiving ground. I heard the snap before I felt it. Pain shocked through my left foreleg and I looked aside to see it bent sideways where it shouldn’t have.

I screamed and felt a strike across my muzzle that just made the worse to the point I couldn’t do anything but cry and howl my moans. I heard Peepers; yes, Jeepers, Creepers, and Peepers were their names. God I love pony pun names sometimes. Their voices were dim in my mind. “Darn it, Creepers! Don’t hit’m when he’s down. Get the filly out and help me get this punk to the hideout and fix his leg. Ain’t gonna be worth much if he ain’t gonna walk ever again.”

I heard them and the thought of losing my leg, even though that’s not what they said or meant, but that’s how I understood it. The thought sent me into a little panic where I tried to get up and run back to where this all started. I managed to hobble a pace before my broken leg swung freely and reminded me what pain really was.

I fell over and saw a black tail, then a new pain struck me as Creepers’s hind hoof met my belly with the force of an adult buck driving it. I kind of remember tumbling into the bushes and shrubbery, I love that word; shrubbery, and then everything went hazy.

I heard talking, screaming, shouting between the adults and being dragged by my tail for a ways, then the throbbing pain in my leg got my attention for a little bit. I realized I was tasting blood and that wasn’t a good thing at all, ever, to taste your own blood. Not that it’s okay to taste anyone else’s, but you get what I’m saying.

It may have been an hour, maybe two minutes. All I remember is the world getting bright and colorful again before I fell asleep. Not passed out, I was exhausted and tired. I woke up fine enough, to the agony of my leg being turned and aligned so they could splint it. Sweetie Belle wrapped me in a hug from behind. I was on a cot on my right side while my other legs were each tied to my body.

My only free leg was outstretched and being wrapped up with two iron bars keeping it as stable as these walking unicorn examples against incest did their work. Well, one held the rods and my leg while one angrily wrapped it with disgusting cloth that looked like it was found in the mud.

Sweetie, meanwhile, kept whispering in my ear. “Snickers, it’s gonna be okay. Please, stay strong. You’re the stallion of our herd and we love you, you’re gonna be fine when we’re home. They won’t stop until they find us, they’ll pay anything.”

“There ya go, good as new,” Creepers said slapping my ankle and resetting my scream system.

I kept my eyes closed and tried so hard to move my leg from the frustrated inbred hick that just got two hits on my. “E-even, we’re even. P-please…” I whined and noticed I was still bleeding from my muzzle, “n-n-no more. Please.”

They all stood up and loomed over me like dark figures in the night. Grey with a white mane, white with a black mane, and black with a grey mane. Creative.

“Well, let’s find out who these belong to and get the note wrote up. Ah’m thinkin’ fer the trouble this colt caused us… five hundred bits sounds good.”

“Nah, Peeperth. Theven hundred. I need new teef and ta get my snout fithed, they thould pay fer thack.”

“Think about it, Creepers. How much is it gonna cost ta fix what happened ta this colt?”

“Darn it, Jeeperth. Medical’th free fer blank flankth and a broken leg’th covered by the crown. Theven hundred, Peepers, write it down and I’ll sneak it inta town. Who’th yer mommy, little filly?”

Sweetie held me a little tighter. I appreciated it, but my insides were hurting really bad. “Sweetie, not… not so hard. I think he broke something in me.”

Sweetie gasped and let me go. She stood behind me but I saw her when I turned my head. She was sad and angry. “I’m not telling you anything! You’re a bully and a foalnapper and you’re mean and I don’t like you!” She sat and crossed her forelegs over her chest and looked away.

Peepers stood over me to look at Sweetie and dangled his sheath near my head. It was awful and I wasn’t about to do something like bite at him, so I shut my eyes and prayed he didn’t get excited. “Who is your mommy, little filly.”

The way he spoke was just creepy in how sweet he was sounding. It was like he was forcing intelligence and sweetness over scum and abuse.

Sweetie stayed quiet so Peepers stepped back and looked at me. “What about you, who’s your mom?”

“Kashvi Sindale…” I said and my eyes widened. Everyone else in the room looked at me like I was crazy.

“What kinda weird name’s that?”

“I… said her name,” I whispered and felt emboldened. I blew blood from my nose across Peepers’s chest finally clearing it. “Fuck you, I’ve had worse than anything you can do to me. Bring it on,” I challenged them. Peepers backed away and looked at the blood on his grey coat.

“You’re lucky you’re worth more alive than dead,” Peepers said to me as he used his magic to bring Sweetie to him. She shouted in protest and tried to fight him when her brought her side to his coat and wiped most of the blood onto her. “Here, take your sister and think about giving me an answer before we have to get to asking in not so nice ways. And watch your language, it’s not proper for colts to talk that way.”

“Good luck with that, asshole,” I shouted at the stallions while they were walking away. Creepers’s horn lit and my broken leg was pushed just a little, enough to get me to yelp and resume crying.

Sweetie looked at her side and then moved to me and gently touched my belly. “Does this hurt?”

“No, I don’t feel anything. Check where he kicked me, Sweetie.”

She looked at me with worry etched onto her face. “I am, it looks really bad, Snickers.”

“How bad is really bad? What’s bad to you could be fine to me.”

Sweetie gulped and looked back to my underbelly. “I trained for this… you’re bleeding internally, at least a lot under your skin. When I saw you on the trail it was a hoof print, now it’s almost three hooves big.”

I swallowed again and forced a smile. “Well, your hooves are a lot smaller than an adults.”

She pouted and her lip started to tremble. Her eyes started to water and she moved to my head so she could nuzzle me. “I’ll do anything I can to get them to hurry, they might not know what happened, but you need to get to the hospital as soon as possible. I’ll tell them Rarity is my mother so they’ll pay more and they’ll send you to Ponyville for proof.”

I chuckled and felt my insides throb with pain. “It’s getting hard to breathe, Sweetie, but you’ve always taken my breath away.” I told her that get her to laugh, instead she started crying like I’d been since I broke my leg. “I’m sorry, I wish we could hug. You need it so badly and you don’t deserve to be here. I dragged you into this with me somehow and it’s… I’m so sorry, Sweetie. Ow… it hurts so bad,” I coughed and tasted more blood. “That’s not good. If this is Harmony trying to get me to learn something, it’s a real fucked up way to go about it,” I chuckled through the stabs in my guts.

“Shush, stay still and calm. I’ll get them and they’ll have to get you help, they have to… I’ll be right back. Stay here, please, don’t move.”

Sweetie left me and I felt tiredness clawing at me, so I yawned and went to sleep again. I woke up gagging and coughing to the sound of Sweetie shouting at the jerkoffs that just poured something down my throat. I started crying again and I actually felt my insides shifting. It was the weirdest and most horrifying sensation I’d ever had to that point in my lives.

“Thut up, ya get a healing pothin. I’m adding that to your ranthom; they ain’t theap.”

“Hey, go easy on the foal. He’s messed up bad, why’d ya have to buck him?”

“It’s okay, Snickers… I’m here, you’re gonna be okay.”

“The damned colt buthted my teef! I thound like that boxther! Damn colt.”

My leg was hit and even though I didn’t know who was talking, I wished all those adults to burn in the fires of hell. If I had a choice, I’d do to them what they did to me. Instead I was at their mercy and couldn’t do a thing about it. My leg pulsed in time with my heartbeat and I really got the feeling this was getting out of Harmony’s control.

Everything felt off and I could tell there was something trying to move the world around me, like a magic pressure of wind, or something that I can’t describe. My crying wound down again and I opened my eyes to see Sweetie looking at me. She had tears streaking her face and she was so scared for me.

She was all I had between those jerks and death, and I came close, I think. It didn’t hurt to breathe, so that was a plus, but I was still tied with barely an inch to move my limbs with one leg broken.

“Snickers… oh, thank Celestia you’re better. I begged them and begged them, they were thinking I was making it up until Peepers came out and looked at you and believed me. He told Creepers and they got a potion, but they only had two and they’re saving one.”

I felt the liquid in my lungs but it didn’t make me cough, it felt good and I was hurting a lot less. “Thank you, Sweetie Belle. I love you, please don’t leave me again. I’m really scared,” I admitted to her and she touched my belly. “I felt that, and it doesn’t hurt. Can we try a hug?”

She climbed up and nuzzled me. “Not yet, I don’t wanna mess up the potion when its working. But, I’ll give you the biggest hug once we’re back home.”

I chuckled and tasted a grape raspberry flavor when the potion finally touched my tongue. “Mmm, I want fruit. Maybe a fruit salad, with a cream cheese dipping sauce.”

“Alright, filly. Get away from your brother and sit over there.”

Sweetie was lifted by yellow magic and moved out of my sight. “Hey, put me down!” She shouted and struggled. “Don’t tie me up! Ouch, you’re pulling hair. You butt heads! If I get outta this I’m gonna tell everypony on you!”

They laughed and left the room, talking about how much they’ll get for us. It was up to eight hundred bits. Sweetie is worth ten times that on a bad day, they were lowballing themselves.

I heard Sweetie grunt and struggling. “Sweetie, I don’t know how, but I’ll get us out of here and we can hide somewhere until they give up. I think that if I can reach my leg… I can… bite through the rope and…” I tried moving and didn’t get much done. Sweetie trotted around to my front with a grin. “Wait… what? How?” I asked in a stage whisper.

She giggled into her hoof. “I trained for that, too. Cutie Mark Crusaders, escape artists,” she whispered, “yay. Now, I’m gonna open the door and come back to save you like a hero in the story books,” she giggled again and rushed to the door. She opened it slowly and came back to get me.

I was reluctant, but she started to nose herself under me so I rolled with her and across her back. “Oof, Snickers, can you turn so you’re not throwing me off balance?” I gulped loudly and tried, but she sighed. “Get onto your hind legs and stay up, I’ll turn and you fall on me and scoot up so your hooves are off the floor, okay?”

“I… I dunno, isn’t that…”

Sweetie looked back at me indignantly. “Are you serious right now? Get on my back, you’re not humping me like a dog in heat, we’re escaping.” She scolded me and embarrassed me a the same time. I bit my lip.

“My hind legs are tied and the knot is by my… thingie.”

She groaned and started walking to the door. “I swear, if this is what it’s like being with a colt, I’ll try fillies for a while.”

“Hey,” I said quietly, the hurt coming through in my voice, “I’m sorry, but I’m really hurt and scared and… and…” I started sniffling as my eyes watered, ready to leave a trail of tears for the bad guys to follow us by.

“Shh, it’s okay. I’m gonna be the mare and save the stallion from the tower, you’re the stallion and this is the tower…” she made it to the door and walked out with me, then we fell into another pit trap.