blackpest

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I took this walk every Sunday morning.

Down the street from Golden Oaks, up past Rarity’s Boutique, a right at the diner, a quick trot through the Everfree, and home before Spike was awake.

A simple thing. A routine. Some familiarity.

More than that, though, it made me feel so much more like I belonged here. All my life before this was spent in Canterlot, never knowing the little nooks and crannies, the alleyways, the potted plants with tiny statutes of frogs and snails and birds. I hadn't ever noticed graffiti tags, or peeling paint, or rusted fire escapes. The city streets were a place to pass through, not a thing as alive and individualized as… well, as it should have been, I suppose.

Ponyville was different.

Or maybe I was different.

Or maybe both.

This was the thing that made me real and whole. This was the thing that made me a Ponyvillian. To myself, and to everyone else.

I took the walk with purpose, every single week. Happy to be out in the fresh morning air. Thrilled to check in on the carved initials in the trees, to run my hoof along the rosemary bush and sniff deeply of its perfume, to follow the cobblestones like a foal afraid of breaking their mother's back.

This morning, though, I couldn’t make myself take another step.

I stood at the edge of the Everfree Forest. The wind blew through the trees with a sound so low and fuzzy and distant it could have been static. In fact, it felt like static… it felt like static had overtaken me, wrapped me up in its ambiguous grasp and squeezed all the feeling out of me.

It took immense concentration to keep myself tethered to reality, to feel the coldness of the damp earth beneath my hooves. I felt a mere blink away from the world of dreams.

I shivered.

I felt so small. My breath was so tiny and light. The forest loomed before me, and I felt no bigger than a mouse… or maybe a songbird, my head twitching from side to side, my fur standing on end like fluffed-up feathers.

Like a hummingbird. Hovering. Heart drumming.

Why today? Why this morning?

I counted, quickly, to make sure today was Sunday.

I looked up to the sun to check the time.

Then back over my shoulder, to make sure I’d come to the right place.

I had.

Everything was the same as always. Same old morning walk, same old trees, same old shrubs and sidewalks, same old air.

But it didn't feel the same at all.

It was like when you were young, on the morning of a field trip. When the air was wet and the grass full of dew and it felt like school but not. And there was no real reason for it to feel different at all, of course, because you had gotten up the same time as always and gone straight to school like always.

But breakfast tasted different. And the schoolyard smelled different.

There would be this almost electric feeling in the air, a whirring and spinning anticipation that shot pure, cold energy directly into the heart of every foal.

The icy electricity ran back-and-forth over and through me.

The wind picked up and swelled over the Everfree in a great wave. My mane tickled against my cheek.

Somewhere, in the very back of my mind, I thought it wasn’t real. Whatever it was that kept me glued to this spot, whatever fear or anxiety, it wasn’t real. I was the champion of irrational fears, after all. So often had I been struck by immobilizing terror over the simplest of things. It would be a shock to find the exception to this rule on an otherwise mundane morning.

But then I saw it.

It was… well. It wasn't natural. That was all I could say for sure.

And it wasn’t wedged between two rocks, and it didn’t have soil kicked over it. It had been placed very delicately and deliberately in the shadow of a large, untrimmed hedge. The early morning sun could barely manage a shadow, of course, but the dappled pattern of the leaves was still visible on its surface.

It was rectangular, made of smooth, grey plastic, and about the size of my hoof. Perhaps a little larger. About a centimetre thick.

I stepped towards the shrub. From the way my shoulders clicked, I had to assume I had been frozen longer than perhaps I'd felt.

The item was not uniform. It had marks etched into its surface, a sort of ribbing. A large, flat area outlined and yet, strangely empty.

My magic was about to close around it when my mind kicked back on.

Somepony had dropped this… right?

I backpedaled a little bit and surveyed the area. "Hello?" My voice echoed strangely. Or maybe not strangely at all. "Hello? Is anypony there?"

Not a sound. Not one hoofstep out of place, not one wingbeat or snapped twig or even a breath of wind.

"Hello…" I persisted, though not as urgently. "I think you dropped something…"

But my hooves carried me forward, and my magic locked around the mystery object.

It didn't feel the least bit strange. Not a hint of magic in the thing.

I shook it. Something rattled, though only slightly. As if the thing inside it were held in place, but with a little room to breathe. Like a good deck of playing cards, sort of.

The object was open on one end, and I could see several dozen metal strips pasted down to the inner surface.

"Twilight?"

I made an utterly inequine sound and instantly dropped the object, perhaps out of a strange sort of guilt for having been caught with it. My back arched up like a cat. I struck a vaguely defensive pose in the direction of my stalker.

Rarity, of course.

Somehow it was always Rarity.

"Oh, goodness!" A hoof flew to her mouth in surprise. She seemed just as scared as I was, like a snake or a bear or whatever that saying is about.

Her mane was done up in curlers and she was still wearing her slippers and robe. Never in my life had I seen Rarity leave her Boutique in slippers and a robe, much less without a tedious beauty routine and perfectly flowing curly locks.

I let out a breath of relief. "Rarity, you scared me!" I took another steadying breath and trotted towards my friend. "What are you doing out here?"

A bloom of embarrassment grew in Rarity's cheeks. "Oh, I just-- well, you see, I--" One hoof went to her mane, as if trying to hide it from me. "Goodness, I'm quite casual, aren't I?"

"Were you… following me?"

"No, no! Dear Celestia, no!"

I cocked my head, but wasn't quite able to summon the question.

Rarity sighed. It seemed as if her entire body slumped with the sound. "For Celestia's sake, you take the same walk every Sunday, and always past my kitchen window," she explained, more exhausted than anything. "I was making morning tea and toast. I always am."

"You…" I swallowed hard. My heart was still throbbing from the scare. "You watch me?"

"Oh, no!" Rarity paused, then chuckled sheepishly. "Well… yes. Just to make sure you're safe! Ponies disappear in these woods, you know."

I looked at her. Her eyes were wide and sparkling, begging forgiveness for this intrusion without words.

"You were just gone so much longer than usual," she continued. "I was afraid you'd gotten lost, or… well, I don't know what, exactly."

I managed a small smile. "That's… that's really sweet, Rarity."

The blush swelled once more. She mirrored my tiny smile. "You're alright, aren't you?"

One more deep breath. "I'm alright. Promise."

It was Rarity's turn to breathe a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness. Oh, I was so worried you'd--" She stopped right there, mid-sentence like that. Her eyes sort of slid down to the ground. Her brows knit together. "What's that?"

I followed her gaze.

The object, now slightly dirtier than before, had been discarded by my side in the confrontation.

My heart clenched. Strangely, this seemed like the sort of thing I should have kept to myself. I couldn't pin down where the feeling came from, exactly, but letting my friends in on my discovery just seemed wrong.

"Um…" I stared at it, trying desperately to come up with an excuse. "I-- I dunno! Probably nothing, just some… litter."

Rarity wandered past me, though, lifting the object to inspect it herself. "That's quite strange… have you ever seen anything like this before?"

She passed it into my magic. I feigned a once-over of the object, already embarrassed by my inclination to hide the discovery. "N-no, I guess not."

"Interesting…" She took it back from me.

Rarity was engrossed, turning the object over and over in her grasp. I could see the little cogs of her creative mind whirring away, searching for details and patterns and--

"Who's Husk?" she asked.

"Who's… what?"

"Husk," Rarity repeated. She turned the object towards me. "It says it, you see? Right there at the bottom."

I took the object from her, inspecting where she indicated. There were, indeed, four tiny letters etched into the plastic:

HUSC

Just like that. There was no mistaking it, not even the misspelling. The letters were purposeful, clear, and obvious.

"Why is it spelled that way?" I asked, more to myself than Rarity if I'm honest.

"It must be one of those new wave spellings," Rarity assured me. "You know, I have a third cousin named Kandy Kane, spelled with two Ks. This must be… Corn Husk! Or-- or Husky… M-Muscles, maybe…"

I snickered. "Husky Muscles?"

Rarity clucked her tongue and made a motion which normal would have flipped her mane quite gracefully, yet now only caused her curlers to clatter against one another. She didn't say anything. I could fill in the blanks, though.

Another silence fell between us as we considered the object. The sound of the cicadas ebbed and flowed, slightly out of sync with the slow rhythm of the breeze.

"What do you think we should do with it?" I asked Rarity.

She sighed a high, mulling-it-over sigh. "Perhaps you should take it back to the library. Normally, I'd suggest leaving it where you found it, but…" She trailed off, considering the object. "Well, who knows what it is. It could get damaged in the elements. Ponyville is a small town; if somepony is looking for it, news will reach one of us eventually."

By 'one of us', of course, she meant 'one of the elements'. It was nice to be part of an 'us', I thought.

"Plus, it'll afford us a little more time to snoop," Rarity whispered, her voice musically excited. "I do love a good mystery!"

I merely laughed a little laugh, one without much power behind it.

"Come on, now," Rarity said, looping her front leg around mine. "Let's get you back to my place for some tea and toast."

Rarity began to pull me away, and I let her.

In my mind, I took a little photograph of the place.

Even then, I knew it was no accident. Maybe not consciously. But I knew. It was placed there so perfectly, so purposefully. A tiny difference in the usual. An exciting one, even.

Like I had wished it there myself.

The blanket of static began to melt away.

My first few steps felt hollow and uncoordinated, as if I were a puppeteer desperately trying to replicate a living pony. It all came back to me, of course, slowly but surely.

Rarity released my leg when we came upon the cobblestone street. Our hooves were in nearly perfect sync.

"How are you faring, darling?" Rarity asked.

She was looking at me with genuine concern and curiosity.

I cocked my head. "Uh… with what?"

"Well, all that, er… let's say 'commotion' at the wedding," Rarity said, as light-hearted as she could manage. "You managed to put yourself back together for appearances, but I just… I'm worried about you, Twilight. I've a feeling you've put yourself last again. You're taking care of yourself, aren't you?"

For a moment, I felt like I couldn't speak. Having friends that know you this well was paralyzing at times.

At last, I managed to force out some sort of half-hearted snort. "I'm fine, Rarity. You don't have to worry about me. Promise."

"Yes, but--"

"It was Cadance who got… well, y'know," I said. The thought of her all bound up in one of those awful cocoons… "She's doing okay. I'm doing okay, too."

Rarity made a small sound of discontent. I could tell she was winding up for more lecturing, and I tried to head it off at the pass.

"Say, don't you have an exhibition coming up?" I asked. "Or, a… fashion line? Commission?"

We arrived at the step of the Boutique. Rarity's magic wrapped around the knob, but she paused and looked back over her shoulder at me.

She smiled at me, a tinge of sadness curling her lips. "Oh, I do love how little you know about my industry."

I blushed.

Rarity opened the door, into a Boutique with not a single light on.

The mannequins looked somehow more eerie in the dark. Their blank faces weren't obviously so anymore; shadows cast over their forms made them appear almost lifelike. If she were smart enough, an intruder could hold perfectly still and go unnoticed in the crowd of hollow ponies.

But, of course Rarity would know if one were out of place. She would have noticed an extra mannequin in her herd. I tried to let that calm me down, but the anxiety was still there. Just a little glowing coal of doubt in my chest.

I followed Rarity through the gathering of mannequins, not unlike royal guards in formation, and into the kitchen.

The enormous, round window lit the kitchen up quite nicely. She was lucky it faced east, I guess.

"Peach or vanilla?" Rarity asked.

"Peach, please."

Rarity nodded, almost knowingly, and lit her horn.

Her talent with magic was impressive, even I had to admit. She wouldn't be shape-shifting any time soon, of course, but her ability to magically multi-task was unmatched.

She stood in the middle of the kitchen, humming tunelessly to herself, eyes closed blissfully. The kitchen seemed to whirl around her as she stood there; mugs were brought down from the cabinets, tea bags dropped into the bottoms, kettle filling with water, bread slotted into the toaster, biscuits placed on the table… all at once. As if it were a dance. As if it were nothing.

"Make yourself comfortable, darling," Rarity instructed. "Have a biscuit."

I did as she asked, meandering over to the table by the window. "Thanks, Rarity."

"No trouble at all."

I put the object down in front of me on the table. I didn't have anything else to do with it, to be honest.

Rarity finished her preparations and joined me at the table. She took a biscuit and nibbled at it politely, watching to see if I would do the same. I mimicked her precisely.

Her gaze drifted to the somewhat dirty object on her table.

We stared down at it together.

"You don't think it's… dangerous, do you?" I asked softly.

"Oh, no! No, no, goodness, no." Rarity paused. Her face hardened, and she lowered her head to look closely at the object without touching it. As if it were some sort of animal.

I leaned down as well. The object looked somehow more menacing here, in Rarity's home. Like it had infiltrated us. Some little kernels of evil.

"Ooh…" Rarity's face soured. "Well, then again…"

We watched, waiting for the object to make a move.

Then, as if a lightning bolt of that cold power had struck us, we leapt back from the table. My chair squeaked along the floor.

The object remained unchanged.

Rarity looked up at me and laughed lightly. I laughed back.

The kettle began to whistle.

"I'm sure it's perfectly safe," Rarity said, getting to her hooves and moving back towards the stove.

The whistle of the kettle died out as Rarity removed it from the heat.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Yeah. Probably a toy, or something."

Probably a toy.

Probably just a lost toy. Nothing to worry about.

Nothing to worry about.

Open

I'm ashamed to say that, for a time, I tucked the object away.

I don't think I really had a reason. The thing was just… I dunno. It was nagging at me, in a way. There was something so distractingly magnetic about it, as if my eyes were being physically dragged back to its dull surface by a force outside of myself.

It almost seemed to hum, to whine, to buzz against my wooden desk. I could hardly read a sentence without being drawn back to it.

Eventually, it became overwhelming. I would sit at my desk to read and just find myself staring at the object. It was like pulling a loose thread on a sweater. The longer I looked, the harder it was to look away. The closer I stared, the stranger it seemed. The longer I thought, the more my anxieties seemed centered on that hollow hunk of plastic.

So I did what any graduate student with work to do would have done: I stuck it in the bottom drawer of my desk and tried to forget about it.

That worked for a while. The drawer did not seem to hold me quite as intensely as the object itself.

What am I saying? It absolutely worked. It had gone out of my mind entirely in hardly three weeks; a side effect of my disordered mind latching onto every little event with the power of an alligator's jaws. There simply wasn't enough room for everything. The little mystery of the woods was overtaken by much more real, measurable, tangible worries.

Overtaken, that is, until I came back from shopping one afternoon.

I entered the library the way I always did: overburdened by bags of books and groceries. Something spilled onto the wood floor as I turned to close the door behind me.

Magical multi-tasking may have been a talent of Rarity’s, but it certainly wasn’t one of mine.

"Spike!" I called. "Spike, come help with the groceries! I've got frozens!"

I didn't hear anything, aside from what may have been a nervous groaning from the baby dragon.

"Spike?" I yelled again, this time less certain.

From somewhere upstairs, I could hear Spike's claws scrabbling against the floor. I was working to separate the books from the groceries when he came bouncing down the stairs, his eyes downcast and flicking back and forth with a nervous sort of speed.

He came to my side with quick and purposeful steps. His eyes never left the floor as he wordlessly began to gather the loose produce.

I stopped messing with the noisy paper bags. "What's that look for?"

Spike froze, the escaped orange in one claw. "Uh… what look?"

"The guilty look," I said. I sighed lightly and then, with my best mom voice, asked "What happened?"

"Wha-- nothing!" Spike put his tiny claws behind his back and stood up ramrod straight.

"Is something broken?" I asked, stepping forward.

Spike backed up one step. "No, I didn't break anything!"

"Did you spill something?" I asked. “Something staining?”

"No!"

"Well, what happened, then?" I demanded.

"N-nothing!"

I stared at Spike.

He tried to stare back, though his eyes quickly darted to the left.

"Do I need to get Applejack to come and give you a lecture about honesty?" I asked.

Spike swallowed hard.

"What happened?"

Spike sighed. His body sort of deflated as he realized he wasn't getting out of this one. "Well, I had this itch right in the middle of my back," he explained. "I mean right in the middle. And I couldn't reach it-- see?"

He demonstrated by reaching both claws around and grasping at the air near his back.

"Mm-hm…" I mumbled.

"So, I decided to look around for something to help me scratch it," he continued, still avoiding my eyes, "and I thought a pencil would be perfect! So I went into your study--"

I bristled at the mention of my study.

"I didn't break anything!" Spike insisted, holding both of his claws out defensively. "I just went in your desk looking for a pencil because I… I couldn't reach the ones on the top."

I clenched my teeth. "Mm-hm."

"And then when I saw you had a video game, I thought I'd… try it out." He looked down at his feet. "I'm sorry, Twilight, I was just--"

"Wait, wait--" I cut Spike off. "A… video game?"

Spike looked back up at me. "Uh… well, yeah. You had an SNES cartridge in your bottom drawer."

I knit my eyebrows together. In my head, I was running through a seemingly infinite list of acronyms, and yet couldn’t come up with a meaning for this one. "SNES?" I repeated haltingly.

Spike sighed again, this one more out of frustration than guilt. "The Super Nieghtendo? You bought me one for my birthday two years ago." Spike cocked his head. "Wait… you didn't know what it was?"

A little flicker of a memory came into my mind. Had it been Shining Armor who had mentioned it to me? Or maybe… somepony from school? Two years seemed like ages when it spanned a gap between life stages. Two years ago might as well have been last century.

But-- yes, there it was. Those grey cartridges, with the stickers on the front! The Legend of Gelda, Super Mareio Sisters… Just like the one in my desk in every way, only the one I had was missing the colorful label.

"A video game!" I exclaimed, smacking my forehead with one hoof. "Of course… just a video game…"

Even as I said it, as if trying to convince myself, that feeling came over me again. Like I was wrapped in a dense fog, or maybe up to my fetlock in swamp water. A dulling of the senses.

Barely there, of course. Nothing to worry about.

"Uh…" Spike shook his head clear of my incoherent comment. "I dunno, Twilight. It's kinda broken."

"Broken? Broken how?" I murmured, my voice hardly articulate.

I pushed past Spike on the stairs. My hooves were walking me up in unsteady, misplaced steps.

There was a buzzing, I could have sworn. This distant hum at the fringes of my mind.

Spike stood still on the bottom stair. "What about the frozens?"

I paused, turned, and cast a quick spell over the bags on the floor. They looked instantly frosty, even on the outside of the paper. Funny-- I hardly even thought about it. It was like it had just spilled out of me.

Spike crossed his arms. "How come you've never used that trick before?"

But I hardly heard his words, instead trotting down the hall and into my bedroom. The fog around me was growing denser with every step.

And the hum was getting louder.

There, beside Spike's bed, was the SNES-- another grey, plastic box with some creative patterns of scoring to make it appear futuristic. Spike had stuck the object--a cartridge, of course!--into a slot on the top.

An additional device was attached to the box by a wire. It had two large buttons and one control stick, sort of like the one used to pilot modern airships.

It was something like a miniature arcade cabinet-- I had seen those around town before. There was a piece that stuck up off the back and housed a small display. The pictures made by the game were locked behind thick, curved glass, and the machine hummed and whined and whirred almost constantly. Like a sewing machine, I guess.

The humming, yes. Very close to my ears, closer than the device was. Like a whisper right into my ear, words in a language I didn't understand.

I squinted at the display.

It was nearly completely black, with a single word printed in bold--yet stylized--white letters in the center.

"Blackpest…" I read aloud.

"I dunno what it means or anything," Spike said, having materialized beside me while I was otherwise occupied. "I think it's the name of the game, but I can't get past this part."

I kept my eyes trained on the screen. It had an odd, flickering quality, as if the heart of a hummingbird was the source of its power. Perhaps a tiny mouse on a tiny wheel.

Spike pushed in closer to me. "It doesn't do anything. It just looks like… that. None of the buttons work."

I reached out with one hoof and pressed one of the buttons.

The display sort of hiccuped, but did not advance.

I tried the next, with the same result.

I paused, then mashed down both buttons and used my magic to spin the control stick in circles. The display flickered a few times, but steadied itself.

"I tried that!" Spike complained. "I tried all sorts of stuff. I think it's just busted."

I kept pounding the buttons. One, one-two-one, two-one-two, two-two--

"Twilight!" Spike pulled me off the buttons.

I stopped to look him in the eye. The humming seemed to ebb.

"I tried that, I told you," Spike explained, his claw retreating guiltily.

"But-- but--" My gaze dragged itself back to the display. "But why would it be like that?"

Spike scratched his head. "Well, I dunno. Maybe the stuff inside's messed up."

"Inside…" I repeated.

I used my magic to yank the cartridge out of the console and peered into its open edge. All those little metal strips, all the electronics rattling around inside… anything could be wrong. So many little pieces…

"Yeah… inside," Spike repeated. He reached out and put a claw on my shoulder. "Say, Twilight: where'd you get that thing, anyway? It doesn't have a sticker."

The question took a little too long to pierce through the fog and reached my mind.

"I found it," I responded, muddled and delayed.

Spike's claw withdrew from my shoulder. "Uh… where?"

"The woods."

"The woods?"

Hm.

Was that strange?

I looked down at Spike.

He had this sort of terror in his eyes. The kind of terror that comes when the pony closest to you is acting just a little bit off, just a little bit screwy; a desire to reach out, and instinct to run away.

It was strange. And he was scared for me.

I clucked my tongue and forced an uncertain laugh. "Oh, come on, Spike," I said, waving a hoof dismissively. "You can find all kinds of stuff in the woods. Bottles, and... and rocks, and photos, and--"

"Yeah, and cursed stuff, maybe!" Spike folded his claws together and took two steps away from me.

The fear was growing.

Calm down, Twilight. For SPike, you have to calm down.

I sighed. "That's not how curses work. You can't curse just anything, it has to be constructed with certain magical elements."

Spike sighed wearily and put his face in his claws.

Perhaps it wasn't the comfort he wanted, but I could see him relax as I turned over into lecture mode. The words tumbled out of my mouth as I stared at the cartridge, turning it over and over in my magic.

"If not constructed with magical elements, a cursed object has to be targeted," I explained, all of it low and breathy. "There's just no way anypony could have known I'd be in the right place at the right time, let alone that I'd pick up and activate the object properly. It can't be cursed… it wouldn't make sense."

Spike peered at me through his claws. "Only you could make curses sound boring."

I said nothing.

What was in there? The inside of this thing was so dark… anything could be in there.

"Well…" Spike cleared his throat. "What are you gonna do with it?"

I held the object--Blackpest, as I suppose it was called--away from my face and considered its construction. There wasn't a lot holding it together, after all. Just two small screws and I'd be able to get a look at whatever was inside.

"I guess I'll open it up," I said. "Maybe I'll be able to fix it."

Spike narrowed his eyes. "Well, what does it matter? It's not like you play video games."

I cocked my head and watched as Spike toddled out of the room. "You're not curious?" I called after him.

He took another step backwards. "Huh-uh. No way, Twilight-- I've heard enough campfire stories to know that no video game is worth the curse."

"I told you, it isn't--"

Spike made a final sound, almost scolding me for continuing. His footsteps fell into an odd little rhythm as he descended the stairs. He could be a pragmatic little dragon when he put his mind to it. There weren't many ponies his age that would turn down a game.

He never was one to be especially curious, I suppose.

I, on the other hoof…

Now that I was thinking about it, really focusing on it... the game cartridge even felt strange in my magic. Where the feeling came from, I couldn't say. It was rather like having déjà vu, I suppose; utterly unable to be defined, and yet certain. A difference, or perhaps a familiarity, that could never be named.

The display on Spike's console may have been blank, but it, too, seemed to still be flickering. As if it were trying with all its might to show me something, but couldn't bring it to the surface. Like a little spark of the game was still inside.

I could feel it.

I could feel… something.

A little spark of… of something!

"Spike?" I called.

Even from here, I could hear Spike's sigh. "I'm putting the groceries away!"

"Okay…" I murmured.

Something… something!

The feeling was familiar. Adjacent to familiar, really. It itched at the corners of my mind, gently but insistently. Like smelling something you hadn't smelled since childhood. Like that last question on an exam you know you studied, and just can't bring to bear. Like trying to remember a very old song.

Two screws.

That's all that held it together: two screws.

I could open it now… right now, with a little magic and a clear space.

The static was wrapping me up again. The fog so dense I couldn't see my hoof in front of my face.

Everything I heard had the same distant and tinny sound.

Everything I felt had the same warm and muggy film.

Everything I saw was of the same washed-out tone.

And yet, I hardly noticed it.

I wandered to the door of the bedroom very slowly, and pricked one ear up.

Spike was dutifully putting away groceries, as evidenced by the rustling of paper bags and the gentle sounds of his claws on the tile. I had to strain to make them out, but they were unmistakable.

He was acting out a punishment I hadn't even given, I thought. What a strange thing for him to do.

Kind of unlike him.

I said nothing of it, just walked back over to my desk and placed the game down in the middle of the wood.

The screws had nothing to set a screwdriver into, no little 'x' or line or foreign polygon for grip. They were perfectly smooth on the top. Little half-domes. Impossible to remove without magic.

A challenge. A special one, just for me.

I lit my horn and wrapped my magical grasp around the top of one screw. It came out quite easily.

Encouraged, I moved to the other screw, pulled it out, and set it beside the first.

The top of the cartridge made a little click as it unlatched from the bottom, and I pulled the game apart.

The inside was… well, let's say it appeared to be quite underwhelming. Exactly what you'd expect of something like it: a little green board, with a few black microprocessors plugged into it here and there, a few golden threads running from one side to the other. It reached down to the bottom edge of the cartridge with golden fingers, kind of like a fork.

It looked quite normal.

How to explain this to a non-unicorn…

If you've ever been to a Nightmare Night party, especially one for little foals, you probably put your hoof in a bowl of peeled grapes. It's a fairly popular game for light-hearted scares; take a regular object, like grapes or spaghetti, but make it feel as if it's eyeballs or guts. A well-placed sign, or a cleverly-told story, and even the smartest foal will believe you whole-heartedly.

A little bit of suggestion. That's all it takes. I tell you it's worms, and by gum you'll believe it.

The suggestion, here, was of a video game. I knew what one should look like on the inside, as I'd seen it in several reference books on circuitry. It looked precisely as I might have expected. That was the clever part.

But the suggestion was not the truth of it.

Or, I suppose, it was a half-truth. The game was still a game-- even if it was an unfinished one. It fit into Spike's console, it loaded up a believable title screen. Anypony with any experience in video games would have done just as Spike had: declare it broken and move on, perhaps a little disappointed, but certainly not willing to poke around any longer.

The whole truth, though, could only be found by a unicorn.

I reached little curling tendrils of my magic through the circuitry, poking and prodding at each element in turn. Some of it felt normal, and some of it did not.

Some of it made me smell fire.

Some of it made the humming much louder.

Some of it sent a little shockwave through me, lighting up my shoulder or my nose in an electric tingle.

And then I found it.

The little sign. The little hole in the shoebox, inviting fillies and colts to put their hooves in the bowl of maggots. A hole in the magic that said 'here, Twilight. Come take a look. Come feel it.'

It may look like rice, but I assure you: there's maggots in there.

Feel.

Feel it, Twilight.

Aren't you curious?

Go on. Feel it.

I fell backwards, and the light from my horn extinguished.

The fog dissipated.

I was breathing hard and fast. My heart was throbbing in my chest. I felt woozy, almost sick. I had never been scuba-diving, but I had to imagine this is what the bends felt like.

It was in my head, of course.

I leapt up from the floor and quickly swept the pieces of the cartridge into a drawer with one hoof. The way they clattered into the bottom made me flush with embarrassment. Such a stupid thing to be scared of. A little foal's toy, a little imagination.

It was just plastic.

I slammed the drawer shut.

Deep down, I promised myself that I'd never touch Blackpest again. Perhaps not in so many words, but in feeling.

Deeper than that, though, I knew I'd be looking forward to the next time I had the library to myself.

I was, after all, a certified magical talent.

I could take whatever this thing had to throw at me.

I was sure of it.

Connect

“Have you felt it yet, Twilight?”

I looked up from my food.

Rarity looked back at me. She held a thick-walled mug of steaming liquid in her glimmering magic. It curled up in little spires, whirling around her face in hypnotic patterns.

“Hm?” I breathed.

“The food,” Rarity said. “Have you tried it yet?”

I bit the inside of my cheek and looked back down at my plate. It was… I couldn’t remember, exactly. Something with eggs and… and kale, maybe. And bread under it all. Maybe hot sauce somewhere?

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, it’s… It’s good.”

My fork wavered in my own magic as I half-heartedly began to push the meal about my plate. I honestly couldn't remember if I'd eaten or not.

Rarity didn’t say anything. She looked at me with a strange sort of longing; the way one looks at a friend when a reunion goes sour. As if to say ‘this isn’t what I thought it would be. You’re not who I thought you’d be’. A desire to close a distance that could not be closed.

Maybe that was fair. One little secret was more than enough to create a cavernous divide between even the best of friends... I knew that all too well.

And this didn't feel little at all. It felt huge.

The sounds of the diner made for a nice cocoon to fade into. I could hardly even hear the scraping of my fork against the plate as I forced the yellow-and-green mush to one side of my plate, then the other. I could feel it in my teeth, though.

“Don’t you think it’s time to feel it?” Rarity asked.

I looked up again.

Her expression had not changed. And yet I searched for it-- for that little hint of aggression that I knew wasn’t there. A hardness in the eyes that would have given her away.

There was nothing there, though.

I sighed lightly. “Time for what?”

Rarity sighed, too. The sigh of a parent trying to reach a withdrawn child. “To talk with somepony. A professional.”

I dropped my fork on the plate. “Oh, Rarity, I--”

“I know what you told me,” Rarity interrupted, holding up a hoof. I dutifully bit back my complaints. “But, darling, I see you slipping. You did an admirable thing at the wedding, really. And I do understand the stuff-upper-lip attitude. I do.”

I snorted lightly in amused agreement. The sound felt foreign.

Rarity set her mug down on the table. “Look. I don’t want to push you in a direction you’re not comfortable. But you’re… you’re not yourself. You haven’t been for weeks now.”

I looked back down at my plate and lifted fork again. I began digging little troughs in my meal with the tines, as if plowing a field.

“That kind of anxiety doesn’t just leave a pony,” Rarity murmured. It all but disappeared into the babble of the diner’s breakfast crowd. “I don’t expect that your already paranoia-prone mental state was improved by what you experienced.”

The booth peeled away from my sweaty hock with an teeth-itching sound as I shifted position.

“I don’t want you avoiding help because you consider yourself a veteran of anxiety,” Rarity said. She lifted her mug again. “Your pridefulness in that arena rivals Rainbow’s.”

“I’m not avoiding help,” I said.

“Oh, lovely,” Rarity said. She sipped her tea. “So you’ve been seeing a therapist, then?”

“I’m not going to see a therapist for getting scared,” I said.

Rarity set her jaw. “I’m sure you know that’s a vast oversimplification of the issue.”

I did.

“It’s not!” I insisted. “Was it scary? Yes. Do I need somepony else’s help to get over that?”

“Yes!”

“No!”

Rarity sighed deeply. She closed her eyes and took another long, slow sip of her tea. Even the terrible, diner-quality tea bags seemed to calm her down visibly. The taste of it put her into a state that was very nearly meditative.

She set the mug down gently. “Twilight, I’ve known you a while now.”

I put my chin down on the tacky table and looked up at Rarity with a scowl.

“This may surprise you,” she continued, “but, a few years ago, I wasn’t unlike you. It took me… more than it should have to break out of the cycle of anxiety. I don’t want you suffering more than you have to.”

I guess I wanted to be angry for a moment--how dare Rarity imply that she knew what I was going through--but I couldn't bring myself to act on it.

My scowl dissolved.

I hadn’t thought about it. And I was surprised. Rarity always came off as a drama queen, of course, but only for the theatrics. For a bit of a laugh out of the rest of us.

Suddenly, those moments of weakness--of outright blind terror when things didn’t go the way she wanted--were painted in a different light. I could think of a few times just in the last week when my heart had skipped a beat over an overlooked detail, a forgotten deadline. Not even permanent mistakes, mind you; merely the idea of one. The possibility.

Of course Rarity was a stickler for detail. Of course I was, too.

Why had I not seen it before?

“Are you connected, Twilight?”

I lifted my head from the table. “Am I… what?”

“Alright,” Rarity repeated. I could sense she was walking a fine like on her fatigue with this conversation. “Are you alright? You seem distant.”

“I’m…” I thought a moment. I’m scared. I’m slipping. I’m confused. I’m obsessed. “Tired.”

Rarity looked disappointed. Perhaps she knew that trick. “Of course. I understand,”

It wasn’t because of the wedding.

I wished it was. If it was, I could have talked to somepony and gotten past the trauma. Easy.

If it had been the wedding, truly, I would have gone to talk to somepony right away. I would have gotten help. I would have gotten better. It would have been easy.

But it was the game.

The little pieces in my desk, whispering to me and laughing at me through other ponies’ mouths.

It just couldn't be anything else.

This great, tangled mass of confusion and horror and paranoia could only be attributed to the game.

It had to be.

“I suppose you’re not hungry, either,” Rarity said. She set her teacup down in the saucer.

I looked down at the food. I could tell, just looking at it, that it would make my tongue fade to static.

"I... Guess not."

Rarity sighed. “Let’s box it up for you. I’ll walk you home.”

Spike was out.

I don't know where he really was. But it wasn’t the library.

“Don’t forget to connect, Twilight,” Rarity said as she left. “You can’t go curious all day.”

That wasn’t what she really said, but it was what I heard.

“Thank you,” I said. “I won’t.”

And, heinously, I meant it.

This wouldn't be the first time I had broken under the game's taunting. Curiosity had gotten the better of me--as it often does--and I had taken the object out to examine the spellwork.

Because there was spellwork. That was clear to me, now. Maybe not powerful spellwork, maybe not even purposeful spellwork. But there was magic. I had sensed it when I’d first picked the game up, and I had been able to find it in a heartbeat when I knew what I was looking for.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to find. The magic had been rather expertly locked behind a firewall-- essentially a piece of magic that could only be edited by a single pony. That pony wasn’t me, and so I couldn’t open it.

Without knowing who had written the spell, I had no hope of cracking it open to see what lay inside.

I took that as a sign to stop poking my nose in places it didn’t belong.

But the voices only grew in intensity.

At first, it was only in my head. Just another item on the endless, tape-recorded list running round and round in the back of mind. My own voice, of course.

And then it was Spike's.

He would greet me when I got home with a "Hi, Twilight," and a "did you remember to connect?"

Not every time. Just often enough to put that item at the top of my mental list.

Connect.

Feel it, Twilight.

Connect.

Every time I broke, every time I proved further, the voice became more insistent. It spoke through more mouths, and more often. Though its message never changed.

It was starting to feel good, in a sick and masochistic sort of way. That rush of adrenaline every time I snuck away... I convinced myself that slipping away was worth it.

My heart was pounding as I entered the library. The anticipation of satisfaction blurred my vision.

"Spike?" I called through the empty library, my voice unsteady, almost giddy. I had to be sure. "Spike… are you home?"

The wind whipped up, and the library creaked in response. Feeeeeeeeeel, it moaned.

The rustling of the leaves sounded like static.

"Spike, I've got groceries," I lied.

The lie made me even more anxious and shaky.

To Spike's credit, he hadn't asked about the game more than twice. I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps the blame for that rests on me, and the strangeness of my behavior.

Rarity had also given up. I told her a half-truth--that the object was a video game, Spike had informed me, and that it didn't seem to work--because I couldn't quite bring myself to lie then.

She had seemed interested at first, and had needled me with more questions. She even suggested I take it to some coder she knew in Canterlot, just to see what a professional made of the thing.

I made poor excuses and danced around the subject. I didn't have time. It just wasn't interesting. I just didn't care.

All lies.

Eventually, she stopped asking.

"Spike…" I called into the darkened building once more.

The wind shifted direction.

Feeeeel, the tree groaned. Feeeeeeeelit.

Maybe Rarity was right. Maybe this all came from the wedding stress.

Always looking over my shoulder. Searching for something strange, or wrong, or different, or just off in everypony I knew. In everything I saw. A sign that what I thought was true was, in fact, not true at all.

Because I had been right.

And it should have made me feel better, but it made the pit in my stomach yawn even wider.

Ever little worry was magnified now, because what if I was right?

Should that make me less worried? Because my instincts were good, and I'd never get myself into trouble again? More worried, because the fear was an overwhelming, swirling mass of terror that clouded out everything else?

Clouded out feeling. And sound. And thought.

Feelit, a bird whistled. Feelit. Feelit.

Feeeeeeeeeel, the tree added.

I stood still in the center of the room. Listening to the bird, the tree. The emptiness. Trying not to let anxiety get the better of me.

Feel it, Twilight, said the little voice in the back of my mind. Connect.

And I had a choice.

Keep on like this, with anxiety latched onto my brain like a rabid animal, an endless paranoia gnawing away at me.

Or… I could be right.

I ascended the stairs slowly, softly. Afraid of getting caught. By who, I don't know.

Just going to take a peek.

A quick little peek. No big deal.

Nothing to worry about.

Feel, Feel, the floorboards moaned.

The game was still in pieces in my desk. For some reason, I chose to reassemble it. Maybe to buy time. Maybe because the tape recorder was rattling empty at the back of my mind, and I just couldn't think a complete thought without it.

The case clicked together. One screw tightened, then the other.

I held the object up in front of me. I remembered the way it sat inside the console, those little metal fingers reaching down into the electronic guts of the machine.

A little tendril of magic on each would do the trick, I think.

I reached out, tentatively, with a wispy-thin tentacle, and laid it against the first finger on the left.

Like water, my magic could float on top, but it could also sink beneath the surface.

I dove.

And I was connected.

Or… well, I guess you could say I was disconnected.

The sound of the leaves vanished completely.

Just like that-- cut off. Choked.

I ripped my magic back out. It came away as easily as it had slipped in, and the sound came back.

Okay, Twilight.

If it can be undone so easily, it can't possibly be that dangerous.

Dipped it in again.

Again. No more leaves.

I reached out another tendril of magic, and connected it with the next metal finger. This time, my vision went a little blurry.

I pulled out again, and the effect vanished.

Not a trap.

Just… something.

I reached in again. Tendril to finger, like Spike's claws interlacing. Like hair tangling into itself. Like the interlocking pieces of a puzzle.

The world melted away. Sight, sound, and touch dissolved to nothing.

And then, as the last tendril met the last contact…

Like waking up from a dream--or perhaps like realizing you're in one--the world came back.

Only different.

Everything was… brighter. Sharper. Almost stylized, as if the world were nothing more than an illustration in a foal's picture book. Or a weekend comic strip.

Everything was still there, of course. My desk, the books on top of it, the open drawer. My bed on one side, Spike's bed on the other. But only the impression of it… I guess. As if it had been laminated, or something.

Floating in front of me was a small string of letters:

I turned my head to one side, and the letters stayed suspended in space.

I reached out and waved my hoof through them. They did not react in the least to my touch. It was like a projection.

The letters faded, though it didn't seem to have a thing to do with me.

Then the music started.

It was light. Upbeat. A little nothing-tune which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. It was strangely electronic and processed.

And now, a new word:

BLACKPEST

Hovering right over my bed. Like a ghost.

I walked around the side of the word, and looked at it from this new angle. As far as I could see, it was very real. It filled the space in exactly the way I anticipated.

And yet, my hooves passed through it. Like mist.

I waited for it to fade.

Nothing happened.

It was... creepy, I guess. This phantom object suspended in my home. In my room.

I should have been afraid of it, I guess. In the way of a horror story, when the terrible things are terrible only because you do not understand them. It didn't feel dangerous, exactly... only viscerally and deeply wrong.

And yet, as the anxiety and adrenaline bubbled up within me, all I wanted to do was laugh.

It was one of the silliest situations I could imagine-- standing here, holding a video game, looking about my own room as if it were completely foreign. I had been terrified of this little cartridge, when it turned out it was… exactly what Spike said.

A video game.

An exceedingly clever video game, I'd give it that. But a video game nonetheless.

A little snort snuck out of me. "Um… hello?"

"Hello!"

I yelped and stumbled forward. Once again, somepony had managed to sneak up on me.

"My name is Hunter Moon," said the voice. It was oddly robotic, I thought.

I looked over my shoulder.

There stood a stallion. Not a real stallion, though; this stallion looked as if he were composed of many pieces of colored paper, cut into sharp-edged triangles and assembled into something which merely resembled a living being. Yet he was there. Really, physically there, like I could reach out and touch him.

He seemed to take up space, even though the light from the window had no effect on his coloring. Even though he cast no shadows.

He looked towards me--not at me, really, only in me general direction--with empty eyes, and continued to speak. "I'm an exterminator with the Blackpest Corporation! Welcome to the team."

I cocked my head. "Me?"

"We've been getting reports of a pest control problem in your area," he continued, undisturbed. "Are you up to the task, new recruit?"

"Um…"

Maybe it was because I didn't have any experience with video games. Maybe it was the way Hunter Moon looked just above my eyes, instead of right at them. Maybe it was the remnant of that voice in the back of my mind, telling me to stop at all costs. That this was an unknown, and therefore dangerous.

Whatever it was, I withdrew my magical tendrils from the cartridge.

The colorful, cartoonish coating on the world was sucked away all at once. I was left, once again, in my bedroom.

There was a dull, distant ringing in my ears, not unlike the whine of Spike's console as it cooled down from extended use.

Actually, the equivalent of a persistent ringing was felt all over my body. My eyes strained to see in this old, low-contrast environment. My limbs felt weak and unsteady.

It was fading fast, but I still rocked back on my haunches and plopped onto my bedroom floor.

Hm.

A video game that took over your senses.

That changed the world around you.

This was going to require further exploration.

Test

I did what any good scientist would do.

I’m proud of myself for that, because there was basically nothing I wanted to do more than tear through this video game like an eager foal. After all, I had been raised on mystery novels. The exploits of Context Clues and the Gumshoe Brothers existed as a sort of literary canon in my own mind, and I could almost feel them egging me on every time I greeted Hunter Moon.

Go on, Twilight!

Say yes.

Accept.

Beat the game!

I didn’t rush, though.

One should never rush an investigation, if at all possible.

No, no. Like any good scientist, I prepared a series of simple experiments.

I had no way of knowing what might happen should I answer Hunter Moon’s question. Perhaps I would be taken by the game, foalnapped if you will. Perhaps I would be locked into playing, unable to disconnect myself until the story had finished. Perhaps the magic would feed back into me, and my mind would be wiped entirely clean. Even more sinister, my own tendrils of magic might be turned against me, and I could become a marionette to this odd, little cartridge.

There were a great many ways the experience could turn sour.

To avoid any sort of cursed-object situation, I began a comprehensive analysis of the behavior I knew I could trust.

My first experiment was quite simple. I held it in my bedroom. I started the game up a dozen times, standing still and simply allowing the opening sequence to play out for me.

It happened the same way every time.

First, about a second after fully connecting to the cartridge, the HUSC copyright logo would appear. It would always appear in the direction I was facing, hang in midair for about five seconds, and fade away.

After another second's wait, the title would appear. It would also appear in front of me, whatever direction I was facing. As the word appeared, the odd, jaunty theme music would kick in-- the sort of thing that echoes eerily from a broken-down carnival ride, yet twice as processed and mechanical. It was also, somehow, sharper and more present. There was an artificial clarity to the sound that drilled into my eardrums and set them ringing in seconds.

The title would hang ominously, theme song looping endlessly, until I made some sort of vocalization.

Hoofsteps did not work. Neither did any sound from outside of my bedroom. It had to be my voice. I'm assuming it could tell what was me and what was elsewhere through the magi-tronic connection.

I tried “hello” for a while, but it started to feel silly. I switched to saying “Blackpest”, but that somehow felt even more stunted and awkward. I eventually settled on “begin”.

Maybe it just made me feel more in control. I don’t know.

Once I had spoken, Hunter Moon would appear. This one was a little different; for whatever reason, Hunter always appeared behind me. My best guess at the reasoning behind such a choice was that, otherwise, Hunter would have to materialize right before my eyes. It probably would have looked cheesy no matter how you slice it. He wasn’t a unicorn, after all.

Hunter would always say the same thing:

“Hello!

“My name is Hunter Moon.

"I'm an exterminator with the Blackpest Corporation! Welcome to the team.

“We've been getting reports of a pest control problem in your area. Are you up to the task, new recruit?"

His timing, intonation, and emphasis was always precisely the same, no matter what I said or did. His head could turn side-to-side to track my movement around the room, but he didn’t seem capable of adjusting up and down, as he always stared just a bit higher than my eyes.

All in all, nothing very impressive. Once the initial shock of a ‘real-life video game’ wore off, and I was able to analyze the idea with my magical knowledge, it seemed rather rudimentary. It wasn’t much more than a basic hologram, with some incredibly simple function cues. Anypony with basic magical education could have put the thing together… it’s just that I couldn’t conjure up the ‘why’ of it all.

It was an odd little thing. The sort which nopony in Equestria should have cause to create. And, yet, somepony had.

And it made the nagging even louder.

I hated that. I hated that, after all I had done, all I had resisted, giving in only made things worse. If I was honest with myself, I could have predicted it.

There were more words, now. Blackpest. HUSC. Hunter.

Easier to tuck into harder-to-find places. Every conversation found a place for one or two. Every morning walk found a way to whisper it to me. Every nightmare had one, or two, or all, in glaring neon staring down at me.

It was all I could think about.

It was all-consuming.

I know that sounds ridiculous, but take a moment to imagine yourself in my shoes: you find a mysterious object in the woods, one that almost seems to speak to you, and find an entire other world inside. Even as I placed these restrictions upon myself, exploring this other world--the world-but-not-our-world--was the only thing I wanted.

That was when I realized that I could explore without committing.

I began conducting the experiments elsewhere in town, just to be sure they still worked. I would often go to restaurants, excuse myself to the bathroom, and give the game a whirl. Unsurprisingly (or perhaps, waiting for that hidden difference, very surprising indeed), it did the same thing every time.

Rarity made plans with me more and more often, under many pretenses.

I made excuses to run off more and more often, under no pretenses.

Eventually, after carrying the thing around for about a week, I sewed a special pocket into my regular saddlebag to hold it. I carried around a map of Ponyville, too, in case I encountered a location where the game behaved differently.

But it didn’t.

Same thing everywhere. Exactly the same.

The sameness had a sneaking terror to it, I thought. No other experiment I'd ever run had this absolute predictability; a percent's difference in humidity, a degree's change in temperature, a single song stuck in my head or a mosquito humming near my ear… all were enough to produce measurable changes in magic phenomena.

Except for this one, which--despite being magical in nature--had the certainty of a well-made and tightly-wound watch.

That wasn't how things like this were meant to work. There were meant to be hiccups, or glitches, or randomized instances of new behavior. The laws of quantum magicks said so: the thought that a spell is being studied or measured is always enough to produce different results, however slight they may be.

And, yet, Hunter always did the same thing. As did I.

I never answered Hunter’s question. In honesty, I was terrified of it.

I’m not ashamed in the least to admit that. You’d have to be quite brave and quite stupid to go messing around in tamper-proof magic. There’s a reason it’s hidden, after all.

So I repeated. Waiting for that quantumly-certain uncertainty to kick in and give me something new.

A week and a half of experiments slogged by, and I still hadn’t shown anypony the game. As far as Rarity knew, the game was broken. As far as anypony else knew, I had never found it in the first place.

I think a part of me was protective of it.

If I showed it to somepony, then they could just beat me to the solution. This way, there was no competition. No unwavering curiosity and drama-loving energy from Rarity. None of Pinkie’s strange perceptiveness. None of Applejack’s overbearing big-sister-ness.

Just me. Me and the cartridge, pezuña a pezuña, a true battle of wits and equals.

And I thought that.

That we were equals.

That I could take it.

But I was so scared. So unbelievably scared that there was something powerful hidden in the spellwork. Something that could wipe me from reality entirely, leaving everypony to wonder where I’d gone.

And yet I could tell no one.

And yet I had to.

The vicious cycle of anxiety and superiority kept me chasing my tail for ten days. Kept me performing little nonsense experiments, poking around at a spell that was clearly well-written and immutable. Kept me circling the answer without ever lighting upon it.

The tape recorder in my mind grew more and more bloated, thoughts recorded over one another in a great cacophony of fears and doubts and paranoia.

I couldn't think of anything else. There wouldn't have been any room.

Which brings us to the day I was caught.

Sunday morning. A walk, as usual. I stopped in the woods to watch the game once or twice, and all seemed just the same… but the creeping sameness. So close that it makes you wonder. Makes you watch more carefully than ever.

When I was finished, I closed my saddlebag and tied it shut with the game inside.

The summer solstice had passed mere days earlier, and so the sun was already up high enough to be seen over the trees. It chased the morning mist away quite expertly.

Rarity had me well-trained. Even at a great distance, I could smell the tea and biscuits she was preparing in her darkened kitchen. Such a great distance that I should not have been able to smell it, in fact. But weeks of routine had suggested it, almost hypnotically.

“Good morning, Twilight!” Rarity called, leaning out her window and waving.

I waved back.

Even though I came over every Sunday, Rarity never made herself up for my arrival. It was always the same robe and slippers, the same head full of curlers. It was an odd little comfort, and a show of trust I had not asked for.

It made me feel all the more guilty to be hiding a mystery in my saddlebag.

I couldn’t help but remember Rarity’s glee in ‘having more time to snoop’ when we had--well, when I had--first picked the thing up. It was something we shared; a love of mystery, an addiction to it, even. To hoard one all to myself…

Rarity appeared at the door, holding it open for me. “Come in, darling. The pest’s ready.”

I smiled sheepishly, filling in the blanks, and squeezed past her. The saddlebag brushed against her chest. “Thanks.”

The Boutique was still dark, as it always was this early on a Sunday. Something about Rarity's proclivity for migraines. Some of the mannequins were clothed, now; her fall line coming together, as Rarity had explained to me.

It didn't quite make sense to me. Making something so far in advance of the occasion, that is. But, as Rarity had put it, "I don't have a time machine, darling."

I took off my saddlebags and draped them over the back of my chair, Blackpest to the inside, where I would be able to feel its shape against my back.

Rarity carried over two mugs of tea. "I do believe I've mastered the timing. These should be ready to drink! Connect, Twilight!"

She set one down in front of me. Peach, my favorite.

It was steaming, but only just. A pleasantly warm feeling on my face.

Rarity slid into the chair across from me. "So, how are you?" she asked, lifting her own mug to her face. "I feel like I haven't seen much of you this past week."

I coughed. "Um… yeah, I guess I've been kinda busy."

"Oh?" Rarity took a dainty sip of her tea and swallowed. "With what?"

I made a long, drawn-out, non-committal sound. "Just research. Boring research."

Rarity rolled her eyes. "Twilight, I'm sure it's not boring at all. Just because I don't understand it doesn't mean it's boring!" She set her mug down, folded her hooves on the table, and leaned over to me with wide eyes. "Go on! I'm all ears."

I was starting to feel worse by the minute.

I leaned away from my friend. "Really. I-it's even starting to get boring for me," I said hastily. Not exactly a lie, but definitely not the whole truth.

"Oh. I see." Rarity held my gaze a moment longer, then sat back and lifted her tea once more. She seemed disappointed. Or maybe 'distant' was the right word.

I took a sip of my own tea. She was right; it was the perfect temperature.

That made me feel even worse, somehow.

"Well, if you ever need a change of pace…" Rarity murmured, running her hoof along the edge of her mug. "I'm always around for a little shopping trip. And I could always use an extra hoof blackpesting gemstones-- I need some amber tones for my next piece."

I smiled weakly. "Thanks."

Rarity returned my sickly grin. "What else are friends for?"

For lying to, maybe?

I took another sip of tea. It burned a bit on its way down, but in that comforting sort of way. Not like alcohol burned… more like how the sun burned. How a campfire burned.

"I'm okay, though," I said.

"Oh." Rarity cleared her throat. "I-I know, darling. I wasn't suggesting… I thought you might want a break from your studies. That's all."

"I'll be alright." I reached out and held the mug with both hooves. "If there's one thing I know how to do, it's work alone."

I laughed half-heartedly.

Rarity did not say anything.

She looked down at her tea. Her horn glowed softly, and the blue light of her magic began to swirl through the tea, stirring without a spoon. Creating a little vortex of deep brown and sparkling cyan.

There was a particular sort of fatigue in her eyes. At the time, I mistook it for pity.

"Rarity?"

She looked up, hopeful. "Yes?"

"Could I, um…" I put my mug down. "Could I maybe use your bathroom?"

Rarity chuckled airly. She seemed more than a little disappointed. "Of course. You know where it is?"

I nodded. "Mm-hm."

My chair squeaked against the floor as I stood. Rarity continued to sip her tea and stare out the window.

After a moment's pause, I grabbed my saddlebags. Luckily for me, Rarity's rigid code of etiquette internally forbade her from commenting. Her eyes slipped down to the floor as the steam clouded her vision.

I had to cross back through the mannequins to get upstairs. Dressed as they were, they still felt alien in the dark. It was difficult not to be afraid of them, I think… the not-ponies. Even more frightening, the almost-ponies.

Up the stairs, take a right. Bathroom straight ahead.

I wasn't going to the bathroom, though.

I hadn't tested the game at Rarity's. While I knew I was taking a risk getting caught, I had to know; what if this was the one place it behaved differently?

A good scientist is thorough.

A good scientist risks it for the answers.

A good scientist's priority is data.

Connect, Twilight.

Find the evidence.

You're the smart one.

You can solve this.

I wandered down the hall and towards Rarity's bedroom, my magic already slipping into the secret pocket and feeling for the metal contacts.

It was starting to have its own familiarity… the slow consumption of my senses, and their sudden explosive return. The voice of Hunter Moon, distant and robotic, and yet somehow so tangible. Spoken right into my ears.

As my senses were taken over, so was my tape recorder.

No more pestering.

No more distractions.

The HUSC copyright appeared hovering over the threshold, and I walked right through it. The game's title appeared next, right in front of Rarity's red sewing machine.

Blackpest.

Then came music, happy and peppy as always.

I turned, putting the large window at my back. I always found it less ominous when Hunter appeared in the light.

I cleared my throat. "Begin."

"Hello!"

I spun to face him.

"My name is Hunter Moon," he reminded me, his jaw moving mechanically as always. "I'm an exterminator with the Blackpest Corporation! Welcome to the team."

I tried to stretch up taller to look directly into Hunter's eyes.

“We've been getting reports of a pest control problem in your area." His eyes were burning into my forehead. "Are you up to the task, new recruit?"

And then he stood there, solid as a statue.

I took in a deep breath and sighed. It was hard not to be disappointed.

Nothing ever happened after, as long as I waited. No more talking, nothing else appeared. Hunter didn't even blink. Just stared at the little spot above my head, perhaps near the top of my horn, and waited for a response.

I sat down. Hunter's head moved minutely to the left, but could not tilt down to meet me.

No blinking. No speaking.

And yet I stared up at him. For a moment, I felt as if I were a curious filly in an art museum, gazing up at the adult-sized statues and wondering what it must be like to look them in the eye. Knowing nothing of their creation, and so convinced that it was something utterly magical and mysterious.

Then, starting from quite far away, I heard a sound.

It wasn't an easily identifiable sound. Just a particular sort of rustling that I could very nearly put my hoof on.

I pricked an ear and looked around the room, searching for the source of the sound.

It was growing nearer, now.

A tingling was starting to run up and down my spine. Was this it? Was this the difference? Was Rarity somehow the key to this mystery?

I got to my hooves and turned around, searching for--

A distant shout.

Now very familiar.

I had barely a second to react before a loud and low sound of collision reverberated through the room. The sound of a dear friend of mine having an unfortunate landing.

There, pressed against the top half of Rarity's bedroom window like a disoriented songbird, was Rainbow Dash. Her wing seemed to be bent at an odd angle. Her face was contorted in pain and shame.

The window held strong for only a fraction of a second, then tilted inward, and a surprised Rainbow was deposited onto the floor like soda from a vending machine.

She tumbled right through Hunter Moon, and his form shimmered like a mirage.

"Rainbow?"

Rainbow chuckled to herself, clearly wincing through the pain. "Hey, Twi," she moaned. "What's shakin'?"

"Sorry, sport! Didn't quite catch that," Hunter announced in his usual overly-friendly tone. "Are you up to the task?"

I balked at this new response.

Had to write it down somewhere.

"Wait…" Rainbow was standing, now. I guess I'd missed that. "What are you doing here?"

My gaze flicked over to Rainbow for a moment. "Uh--"

"Rainbow Dash!"

I whirled about.

Of course: Rarity, and looking mighty pissed.

My instinct was to turn Hunter off, but I couldn't bring myself to. The reason is as foreign to me as it is to anypony else. Perhaps the realization of my anxieties over getting caught had frozen me completely.

Rainbow chuckled again, her focus falsely placed on brushing her mane back into place with one hoof. "Hey, Rares."

"'Hey'?!" Rarity repeated. "Rainbow Dash, this is the third time this week you've fallen through my window! I told you to practice somewhere else!"

"Whoa, whoa; let's cool it with the full names, okay?" Rainbow was looking less embarrassed by the second. "It's not like I broke anything."

Rarity looked up at the window, checking for damages. She very nearly made direct eye contact with Hunter Moon. He was still standing there. As if he were part of the conversation.

But I watched Rarity trot forward, eyes trained up at the open window, intending to examine it more closely-- and she trotted right through him without a thought. Like he was a ghost.

It made my horn tingle ever so slightly.

Rainbow looked at me, a shadow of doubt in her eyes. "What's the big deal? You already have Twi over."

My eyes flicked over to Hunter, then connected with Rarity's.

Rarity caught my gaze, then squinted at Rainbow.

Rainbow gave Rarity a once-over, taking in her morning dishevelment and trying to slot the pieces of the puzzle together.

She was suddenly overcome by the giggles, and put a hoof to her mouth. "Oh, my gosh, are you two--"

"No!" Rarity squealed. She rolled her eyes and looked over at me, attempting something more like pity. "Twilight, dear, what are you doing in my bedroom? I thought you were going to the little filly's room."

Rainbow snickered.

I swallowed hard.

Hunter Moon, a ghost to these two, was looking over my shoulder. Though I could not see his face, the expression was burned into my mind. It begged me to say anything at all which could be interpreted as an answer to his question.

"Um…" I considered my response carefully. "Sorry, I… I guess I--"

"Are you using your magic?" Rarity asked.

"Sorry, sport! Didn't quite catch that," Hunter added with undue energy. "Are you up to the task?"

Chilly electricity up my spine.

My magic wasn't obvious. I could keep it faint, nothing but a background routine. Like a song stuck in your head. But, with the sudden quiet in the room, Rarity could hear that gentle sound of tinkling bells that accompanied its usage.

Rainbow cocked her head in confusion.

Okay.

Think, Twilight.

Only I couldn't think; everything I had was filled with Hunter, with notes I had to write down, with the churning terror of having been caught, with--

My magic surged, without thought, and pulled the object out of its pocket.

Rarity gasped softly.

"The fuck is that?" Rainbow asked, eyebrows knit together.

Rarity clucked her tongue and stamped one hoof on the floor. "Really, now!"

"What?" Rainbow whined. "I've heard you swear plenty, Rares."

"You have not!"

"Have, too!" Rainbow retorted, stamping her own hoof. She looked back at me. "Seriously, what is that thing, Twi?"

My heart thrummed in my throat.

A little honesty, Twilight. Go on.

"It's a game,” Rarity said. SHe was answering Rainbow, but her eyes were only focused on me.
"A game?" Rainbow breathed, excitement barely contained.

"Yes, Rainbow. A game.” Rarity rolled her eyes, then turned her gaze back to me. “I don't understand, Twilight-- I thought it was broken."

I cleared my throat. “Uh… i-it was. I thought.”

"Sorry, sport! Didn't quite catch that. Are you up to the task?"

Rainbow's confusion only grew. "Why do you have a broken SNES game?" she asked, a reasonable question if I've ever heard one.

I set my jaw.

Hunter was still as a statue--this I know beyond the shadow of a doubt--and yet I felt strangely as if he were leaning over me, poised to leap upon me should my secret get out.

But my tape recorder was zipping along again, spluttering something entirely new:

Tell them.

“Twilight? Are you alright?” Rarity asked. “Just tell us.”

I pulled my magic out of the game, and came rushing back to reality. Rarity’s face seemed so much more concerned without the bright, overly-saturated visual filters.

"It's not broken," I blurted out. "I'm playing it."

There was a moment--a long one--where nopony quite knew what to say.

Rarity was staring at me and, although she said nothing, every thought was written plainly in her expression. There was a depth of concern and confusion which could only accompany the admission of a crime which had never been committed; as if I’d fessed up to stealing the ocean, or foalnapping Princess Celestia.

It was a reflection of my own distress--an acknowledgement--but a profound misunderstanding of it.

I could almost see the questions forming on her lips: Why? Why so upset? This is nothing to lose your head over.

But my chest was heaving.

“I’m--” I choked on the words, and my breath hitched. “I’m--”

Rarity gave me a look which silently asked me to wait, and turned to Rainbow.

“Rainbow Dash?" she called.

Rainbow stiffened a little, but her eyes were glued to my face.

Rarity cleared her throat. "Could you give us a moment, please?” She said it so sweetly and calmly, you'd never know a thing was wrong.

Rainbow remained frozen to the spot. Her eyes ran over me, over Rarity, desperately searching for the explanation.

“Alone?” Rarity pressed, through a set jaw.

At last, Rainbow blinked. “Oh!” She paused, shook her head clear. “Yeah, I’ll… yeah. Sorry.”

She departed in a little skitter, and shut the bedroom door behind her. The tiniest breath of air from downstairs managed to squeeze into the room-- a calming, wispy breeze of tea and biscuits. How badly I wanted to rewind. To not give into temptation.

Rarity turned back to me, and the stress hit me once again, full-force. Right in the sternum, like a bag of bricks. Like a swift punch.

“Twilight,” she said, softly. Gently.

I made a sort of strangled sound and took a shaky step back.

Rarity hesitated. She looked at me the way one looks at a frightened animal; a compulsory gentleness, a recognition of my fragility, and a fear of getting too close.

She sighed and shook her head. “What is going on?”

I bit down on my lip. I couldn’t speak at all.

“You’re not acting like yourself, darling. Not at all,” she continued, her voice low and smooth. She took a step towards me. “I don’t understand why you would hide something so…”

She searched for the right word for a while.

Stupid?

Pointless?

Embarrassing?

Inconsequential?

She closed her eyes, cheeks taught. “Help me understand, Twilight. I’m trying so hard to understand.” She laughed. A sad, strained sound. “All this-- this unnecessary obfuscation, this distance… you insist you’re doing alright, but I only see more and more evidence that you aren’t.”

My chest hitched again.

“Talk to me.” Rarity smiled a bit. A sad smile. “All this extra time I’ve been making for you… I want to talk to you. I want to hear what’s going on inside your head. I can see that you’re fractured, and I--”

“I was scared,” I said.

And, again, it was like it was out of my control. Words falling out of my mouth without thought or meaning, as if my tape recorder had unfurled along my tongue, rolling across Rarity’s bedroom floor.

She blinked. “Scared?”

I nodded, a desperate action. “I was-- well, I thought that--” I closed my eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. “It’s m-magic. I thought it would-- that it could--"

Rarity cocked her head and waited patiently for me to continue.

I could feel the words pushing at the back of my tongue. “I didn’t-- I was just--!”

And then I started to cry.

It all felt so silly, as so many things do the moment you start to cry. In every tear was a small, dark droplet of bundled-up anxiety, leaving only a pale hole of shame and stupidity.

"Oh, darling!" Rarity whispered.

She rushed to me and embraced me, gently but insistently.

The sound of the cicadas ebbed. I let myself continue crying, barely reigning it in enough to be considered polite. Not that I think it would have mattered to Rarity; her slippered hoof was hooked around the back of my neck, plastic curlers clattering like cheap windchimes in my ear as she nuzzled my cheek.

Rarity stood very still. Her breathing was calm and even. She did not complain, not even as my tears soaked the fur on her throat and shoulder.

"Hush, now," she murmured, pulling me closer. "Everything will be alright."

I didn't even know why I was crying. If anypony had asked, I wouldn't have had an answer.

"Everything will be alright," Rarity repeated. She kicked off her slipper and stroked my spine with one hoof.

The tears left, as many do, a sense of nauseated hunger in their wake. I felt that speaking left me with a solid chance of vomiting or crying more, but I decided to take a risk.

"I'm sorry," I said, and another little hiccuping cry escaped me. "I'm sorry, Rarity, I should have talked to you."

Rarity laughed, a dry and toneless sound. "Now, how could I expect you to do that?"

I sniffled and pulled away from Rarity.

She looked tired. Her eyes had a drooping darkness to them as she looked back into mine. The shadow of a sad smile still hung at the corners of her mouth.

I cleared my throat. "Huh?"

Rarity closed her eyes. "Well, that's where this is all coming from, isn't it?" she asked. She lifted a hoof and tried to tuck her mane behind her ear, only to find a bundle of curlers. "I didn't believe you when you said Cadance was-- was a--"

The word wouldn't come out.

Rarity shook her head and straightened up. "Why should this be any different?"

Oh.

Was that it?

"N-no, Rarity, I--"

Rarity held up a hoof.

I closed my mouth.

"I don't expect it will make a difference," Rarity said, eyes trained on the floor, "but I swore to myself after the wedding that I'd never doubt you again."

I wiped away some of the tears on my cheek with one hoof.

In my mind, I tried to untangle those remaining dark threads of paranoia and fear. All I could find as I tore manically through the knotted mess were loose ends of individual terrors. Every connection only darkened to an imperceptible mass.

Even in the pale, post-cry emptiness, the knot loomed larger than I could perceive.

It was possible, I suppose.

It was possible that I had been acting this way because I didn't trust Rarity.

The thought made me want to burst into tears all over again.

Rarity looked up at me. "We used to trust each other with everything."

I put a hoof to my mouth. I don't know what good it did, or what good I thought it would do, at holding back the things I wanted to say.

"I'm asking you to give me a chance to rebuild that trust," Rarity said. "Please."

If my mind had been in any sort of working order, I might have been struck by the way she used 'I' instead of 'we'. The way Rarity placed so much blame on her own shoulders for something all five of my friends had had a part in.

But I didn't think that far.

I nodded. I couldn't think of a single thing to say, so I nodded.

Rarity's eyes brightened. She, I suppose, didn't have anything to say either. She laughed in disbelief, and embraced me once more.

"You lead the way, alright?" She murmured in my ear. "We'll win the game together."

It sounded innocent. Almost fun.

"Okay," I agreed. A little giggle snuck out, though it tasted the same as the crying had. "After tea."

Rarity smiled, though her eyes still looked dark and droopy. "Of course. A mare after my own heart."

She turned to leave, then held open her hoof, as if for a hug.

I sidled up beside her. Rarity wrapped her foreleg around my shoulders, and we walked together to the bedroom door. It was a small thing, but the comfort was simply enormous.

Rarity opened the door with her magic.

There was a distant sound-- a sort of ceramic clattering. Rarity's ears pricked, and she listened carefully.

Even I could hear somepony chewing, loudly and with some emotional vigor.

"Eugh." Rarity pinched her ears down against her head. "Does that pony understand even a single social cue? For goodness' sake…"

She released me and trotted down the stairs, looking like a lion stalking a gazelle.

I followed behind, a little slower. I resolved to let the confrontation play out without me.

Rarity turned a corner and marched into the kitchen. "Rainbow Dash!" Her shrill voice was punctuated by the sharp sound of a dropped plate. "I thought I told you to leave!"

Rainbow choked on whatever baked good she'd been shoveling into her mouth. "You said a minute alone!" she shot back, likely spraying crumbs everywhere. "I smelled cookies!"

"Ugh!" Rarity stomped one hoof. "Somehow the rules of polite society have escaped you entirely, haven't they?"

I crept down the stairs, listening from afar as my friends bickered.

They felt very far away.

Rarity's boutique was still filled with mannequins. Lined up like good little soldiers, despite their frilly costuming. I stood there, staring at them, waiting for the green flash of light and the hiss and the teeth and the humming of the wings and--

But it was just the cicadas.

I trusted Rarity.

I did.

I swear it.

"You can be such an ignoramus…" Rarity muttered.

"H-hey…" Rainbow said, hesitantly, as if searching for the meaning of the word somewhere in the back of her mind. "I thought we were gonna talk about the game and stuff."

Rarity sighed. "Maybe some other time, alright?"

I peered around the corner and into the kitchen.

Rainbow did indeed have a little feast for herself made up on one of Rarity's nice plates, which she seemed to have dropped into the countertop in shock when she was confronted. She snapped her wings in against her sides when she spotted me.

I cleared my throat, and Rarity turned to look, too.

"We can talk about it," I said.

Rarity's mouth went taught. "Twilight, really, you don't have to--"

"I want to." I swallowed hard. "I trust you guys."

Rarity's eyes softened.

Rainbow seemed even more lost, but I was content with leaving her to her confusion.

As I stood there, in Rarity's kitchen, the morning sun glinting through the window and the air heavy with bergamot and ginger, one of the dark threads tugged loose. To my disappointment, it held no more meaning alone than it had as part of the knot. It was a nebulous, fuzzy thing… a fear that I couldn't quite name.

And yet, with my friends, it was isolated. It was fading.

Rarity rolled her eyes and sighed, although this one was much more in jest than in distress. "I suppose I'll put on water for another cup of tea?" She looked to Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow stuck her tongue out. "Eh, no thanks. Do you have orange juice?"

Rarity said nothing. Her magic swirled quietly around the fridge, producing a nearly-empty carton of orange juice, which she shook in Rainbow's face.

"Thanks!" Rainbow greedily snatched the carton from Rarity's magical grip, twisted the cap off with her teeth, and guzzled straight from the spout.

"Ugh," Rarity scoffed. "You'd think she'd been raised in a barn."

I chuckled.

Rainbow shrugged the comment off and popped another cookie in her mouth.

Rarity's magic appeared once more, this time around the mugs of tea on the kitchen table. In a moment, they were steaming and ready to drink.

"Come now, Twilight," Rarity said, gesturing to the chair where I typically sat. "Why don't you tell us about what you've found?"

Rainbow nodded, then belched. "Yeah, where'd you get that thing, anyway?"

Rarity made a small sound of disgust.

"Um." I maneuvered a chair out from the table and sat down stiffly. "Th-the woods."

Rainbow's eyebrows pulled together. "Like… the woods the woods?"

"Yes, darling, in the Everfree," Rarity replied, sipping daintily at her tea. "Twilight and I found it a few weeks ago."

“You found a video game in the woods?!” Rainbow’s jaw hung open. She set her gaze on me. “And you kept it?!”

I blushed heavily. “I-I thought somepony lost it!”

Rainbow cocked her head. “So… you kept it?”

I opened my mouth to respond, and the thoughts got stuck at the back of my throat.

Why would I do that?

Rarity chuckled nervously. “You’re mischaracterizing us!” she said, setting down her tea. “We took it in for safe-keeping! We didn’t know what it was, and we thought it might be damaged if it sat out in the rain.”

Rainbow sort of narrowed her eyes, glaring at Rarity in suspicion.

Rarity’s eyes flicked all around the room, landing briefly on my own, then darting up towards the ceiling. At last, she let out a huge sigh. “Alright, fine. We wanted to snoop.” She looked over at me, sympathetically. “Well… I certainly wanted to snoop.”

Rainbow turned her suspicion on me. “But you didn’t know what it was?”

I looked down into my own cup of tea. “Um… no.”

“Doesn’t Spike have a Super Neightendo?” Rainbow asked. “I thought he said you bought it for him for his birthday…”

“I don’t know video game stuff!” I exclaimed, pounding my own hoof on the floor in exasperation. “Spike was the one who… who told me it was a game.”

“Rares, you didn’t know what it was, either?” Rainbow asked, her snide superiority now directed at Rarity. “Have you guys been living under a rock? Like… the same rock?”

“Oh, hush,” Rarity instructed, waving away Rainbow’s smirk. “Don’t blame me and Twilight for our lack of interest in such things. Last I checked, video games were a foal’s passtime, anyway," she said, with a noisy flip of her curler-imprisoned mane.

Rainbow stuck her tongue out at Rarity.

Rarity mirrored her friend’s rude gesture.

Rainbow doubled down with a raspberry, which Rarity haughtily declined to return. Rainbow clearly considered this to be a win.

"So, how'd you get it working?" Rainbow asked. "Rares said it was broken, right?"

I took a deep breath. "I thought it was," I said. With my magic, I reached around and pulled the game out of my saddlebag. "It didn't work normally at all. Spike tried to play it and it barely did anything."

I set the game on the table.

Rainbow stared down at the game. "But?"

She reached across the table and grabbed another biscuit, stuffing the whole thing in her mouth.

"Slow down, Rainbow!" Rarity scolded.

Rainbow waved it off.

I coughed. "Well, that's because it's…" I shifted in my chair. It was hard to get the words out; they felt so silly. "It's magic."

The girls stared at me blankly.

I stared back.

"Meaning…?" Rainbow prompted.

I nickered softly, squared the game's corners with the checkered tablecloth. "Usually, these sorts of games run on electricity. You plug them in, a current flows through the contacts, and the code runs the game," I said. "Of course, that's a vast oversimplification. There's--"

"We get it, nerd," Rainbow interrupted, spraying crumbs. "What's with this one?"

Oddly, Rainbow's belligerence and disinterest only served to make me more comfortable. I guess this is what having friends was all about.

Rarity shot me an apologetic look, but I only smiled back.

"This one runs on magic," I said. I held up the cartridge for the girls to look inside. "When I connect my magic to the contacts, it runs the game."

Rainbow's confusion and excitement very nearly projected into the air between us. "Where?"

"Um…" I shrugged. "E-everywhere."

"Everywhere?!" Rainbow's eyes went wide as dinner plates. "Like-- like everywhere? Like in real life?!"

"Goodness," Rarity murmured into her tea. "That sounds interesting."

"Interesting?!" Rainbow Dash was vibrating so hard she was practically leaping onto another plane of existence. "You found a video game in the woods that turns real life into a magic adventure?! And you think it's just interesting?!"

That almost made it sound like… fun.

Was this supposed to be fun?

"Rainbow Dash, calm down this instant!" Rarity scolded. "I won't have you screaming and carrying on at this hour."

"What's it like?" Rainbow continued, undeterred. "Is it a fighting game? Racing? Stealth? Does the game give you magic powers?"

I looked back down at my tea. "I dunno," I said.

Rainbow faltered. "You don't know?"

"Well, I…" I cleared my throat. "I didn't get to that part, exactly.”

Rainbow’s eyebrows twitched closer together. “What part?”

I lifted my mug to my lips. “The… game part.”

I took a sip of my drink and kept my eyes trained on a distant point of wall.

Rainbow Dash closed her eyes and took a long, slow breath. “Let me get this straight: you found a video game in the woods?”

“Um… yes?”

“And it runs on magic?”

"Yeah…"

"It turns real life into a game?"

“For pony’s sake, Rainbow, we get the point!” Rarity complained.

“But you haven’t even played it?!” Rainbow Dash threw her head back and let out an enormous cry of exasperation. “I can’t believe you guys! Finding a secret video game in the woods is the sort of thing that’s supposed to happen to me!”

Rarity scoffed. “That has to be one of the stupidest things you’ve ever said to me.”

But Rainbow could hardly be talked down. “What else have you guys been doing without me?” she demanded, beginning to pace about the room. “Did you go treasure-hunting? Sky-diving? Ghost-hunting?”

“Of course not!” I shouted back. “This was just something stupid that I-- that we found in the woods! It wasn’t a big deal!”

"Well, we've gotta play it," Rainbow said matter-of-factly. She stood up, chair squealing against the kitchen tile.

Rarity huffed. "Can't have a single hot cup of tea without interruption," she muttered, taking another long draw from her mug.

"Uh--" I blinked. "I-I didn't even tell you what it's called."

"Okay," Rainbow said. "What's it called?"

I set my jaw. "Blackpest."

"Great! Let's go play blackpest, then," Rainbow commanded, pounding a hoof on the table.

I opened my mouth, then closed it, making not a sound. I probably looked not unlike a carp gasping for breath. "But-- but--"

Rainbow sighed and rolled her eyes, flopping back down into the chair. "Let me guess: you've spent the past few weeks stressing about the right way to do this, probably taking tons of notes and generally acting like a dork."

I folded my forelegs over my chest. "Well, I don't really like you calling me a--"

"Save it, dork," Rainbow said, a hoof held up to silence me. "If we let you do this your way, you're gonna be stuck going in circles for months! The only way to play a game is to play it."

Play it.

"I hate to say it, but I think Rainbow's right," Rarity said.

Rainbow puffed out her chest with pride.

Rarity reached over to touch my hoof with hers. "We'll be right here with you."

She didn't say it, but the silence which hung in the air said it for her: if anything goes wrong, we'll pull you out. Your friends are here to keep you safe. To trust you.

"What about everypony else?" I asked.

Rainbow scoffed. "Yeah, I'm sure Fluttershy would love playing a haunted video game you guys found in the woods." She laughed. "Sounds like her scene. Totally."

"Darling, everypony else is out of town,” Rarity said.

Wait… no, they weren’t. They couldn’t be.

Rainbow’s eyes rolled up towards the ceiling as she considered it. Eventually, she nickered and shook her head. “Ah, shit. You’re right.”

They were?

It scared me that I hadn’t known that. How had I not known they were gone? How long had they been away? Had they told me? Had I missed it? Had I just been locked away that long?

“They… are?” I mumbled.

Rarity looked at me with almost as much fear as I felt. “Well… yes, Twilight,” she said. “Fluttershy is tracking the sea serpent migration, Applejack is helping her cousins with the zucchini harvest, and Pinkie is at some… expo, or something.”

“Baker’s convention,” Rainbow corrected. “In Las Pegasus.”

It was almost familiar. I could almost remember being told these things, almost remember being hugged goodbye.

Rainbow laughed and held out a hoof to me. "Hey, shit memory crew, ammirite?"

I reached out and bumped her hoof.

Rainbow grinned goofily.

Rarity gave me a sympathetic smile.

I tried not to be scared of my very, very shit memory.

"Well?" Rainbow leapt back up out of her chair. "Start it up! Start it up!"

I looked to Rarity, maybe for approval, maybe for help.

She nodded. "In your own time, dear."

I took a deep breath.

I connected.

Learn

© HUSC

BLACKPEST

The music was almost real. Every falsely-conjured sound was adjacent to something very familiar and tangible; the stomp of a hoof on hardwood, the strike of a key on a harpsichord, maybe even a voice. It bounced and meandered, easy and light. A somehow foalish version of real music.

"Can you hear that?" I asked. I could feel myself shouting over the music track.

Rainbow cocked her head. "Uh… What?"

"Music!" I replied. "It sounds kind of, uh… I dunno…"

"Baroque?" Rarity guessed.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. "It's called harsh noise, Rares, not 'broke'."

Rarity pinned her ears down against her head, but apparently deemed this not worth the argument.

"Is it chiptune?" Rainbow suggested. "Like computerized sounds?"

"Um…" I scratched my head. "Maybe?"

Rainbow clucked her tongue. "Have you ever actually played a video game before, Twi?" she asked. Her annoyance was evident.

I considered the question carefully. "I played video trivia once with Spike!"

"Ooh! I quite like those," Rarity said with an innocent smile.

Rainbow smacked her forehead with one hoof. "If I was a unicorn, I would take this over so fuckin' fast."

I sighed wearily and turned my attention back to the game.

To my surprise, the game title was still hovering in front of me. In the past, even a single syllable had been enough to trigger the game's start sequence.

And yet it sat still. As if it were waiting for me.

"Huh," I said.

"What is it, Twilight?" Rarity asked.

"Well…" I walked towards the title, peering around it to look for differences. "Usually the game starts when I talk. But it's not doing anything now."

"That's odd," Rarity said. She then turned to address Rainbow. "Is that odd?"

Rainbow scoffed. "How should I know? It's not like I've played any magic video games lately." She cupped her hooves around her mouth and shouted: "Hey, Twilight!"

I winced. "I can hear you just fine! You don't have to shout!"

"Oh." Rainbow looked somewhat disappointed by that. "What do you always say?"

I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling. "Uh… I dunno, what do I always say?"

"To start the game, dope!" Rainbow corrected.

I blushed. "Um… begin?"

"Hello!"

I yelled and stumbled forward a few steps at Hunter's sudden, processed greeting.

Rarity shot up from her chair. "Twilight!"

“My name is Hunter Moon," Hunter continued.

I managed to get my bearings again, and turned to face Hunter. "I-it's okay! He just scared me, is all."

"I'm an exterminator with the Blackpest Corporation!" Hunter reminded me helpfully, as if I'd have forgotten. "Welcome to the team."

"Who, darling?" Rarity asked.

Rainbow, however, was already out of her chair and wandering about the room. "Is he invisible or something?" She held one hoof out in front of her, waving wildly at the air.

“We've been getting reports of a pest control problem in your area," Hunter continued. His words were not interrupted, despite the sudden and violent presence of Rainbow's hoof in his chest cavity. "Are you up to the task, new recruit?"

I held my breath, waiting for the difference.

But all was just the same.

Well… all but the entrance.

Part of me--the outer part--wanted to believe it was a fluke. But the inner me knew better.

It was almost as if the game had learned. Learned about me.

"What's happening?" Rainbow asked. Her body was partially phased into Hunter's, which made for a confusing visual.

"Um…"

How to explain?

How to narrate this experience?

"There's a stallion," I said. "His name is Hunter Moon."

Rarity chuckled lightly. "How funny. I do believe I know a Hunter Moon."

Rainbow rolled her eyes. The small motion of her head caused most of her face to disappear into Hunter's neck. "Yeah, and I bet you know a Daring Do, too."

"He's standing-- well, Rainbow's kind of standing inside him," I continued, blowing past the distracted bickering.

Rainbow made a cry of disgust and leapt backwards. "Hey, warn a girl next time!"

Rarity chuckled, a hoof placed demurely over her mouth.

"And he says 'hello'."

I paused, trying to remember his next line.

"That's it?" Rainbow said. "Hello?"

I sighed. "He's an exterminator with the Blackpest corporation," I explained.

"Oh! Is that a real company?" Rarity asked.

"Of course not!" Rainbow complained. "It's a game, Rares! None of it's real!"

Rarity spluttered nonsensically for a moment. "There are plenty of games with real things in them!"

Rainbow sat down hard on the floor and folded her forelegs over her chest. "Oh, yeah? Like what?"

"Like, erm…" Rarity froze. She reached up and tapped her chin with one hoof. "Well, like… um…"

I cleared my throat, loud and sharp.

Rarity folded her ears down against her head. "Oh. Terribly sorry, Twilight. It's just very exciting!"

"She hasn't even gotten to the exciting part yet!" Rainbow pulled at her lower eyelids with both hooves. "Ugh! I swear, you ponies don't know how to have fun!"

"Go on, Twilight," Rarity encouraged. She threw in a little wink.

I took a steadying breath. "He says that there have been reports of pest control problems in the area. Apparently I'm a new recruit, and he wants to know if I'll help."

Rainbow's eyebrows furrowed. "With… pest control?" She looked at Rarity. "Like, cockroaches and shit?"

"Ew!" Rarity exclaimed. "What a disgusting concept for a game!"

"I…" I looked up at Hunter. He loomed so much larger than Rainbow and Rarity, even larger than Big Mac. He reminded me of the terrifyingly enormous royal guards Shining Armor used to work with. "I have no idea. He just asks if I'm 'up to the task', and waits for me to answer."

"How long does he wait?" Rarity asked.

I tore my eyes away from Hunter, and looked back over my shoulder at Rarity. "I think forever. The longest I've gone is… maybe two hours."

Rainbow whistled. "Damn. Must be a patient guy, huh?"

I looked up at him again. "Must be…"

"Didn't quite catch that, sport!" Hunter said. "Are you up to the task?"

"Tall, too," Rainbow commented. She took flight and hovered right near Hunters head, her wing clipping into the back of his skull with each stroke. "Up here, right? I think that's a good few inches on Macintosh"

I blinked. "How did you know?"

Rainbow landed quietly beside Hunter. "That's where you're looking, dummy."

I chuckled. "Right. Duh."

"What precisely does he ask you?" Rarity trotted over to my side. "Forgive me, I just want to know if we're missing something."

If we're missing something.

I smiled sidelong at her. "No, no-- that's a good question," I said. "He says hello, and then--"

Rainbow jumped into the air again, hovering at Hunter's height. "Hello!" she repeated, her voice booming.

Rarity snickered. "What are you doing?"

"What?" Rainbow smirked. "I'm being Hunter! For… y'know, learning and junk. What's he say next?"

"Um… well, he introduces himself," I said. "And he welcomes you to the company."

Rainbow put her hooves on her hips. "I'm Hunter Moon, and I kill roaches for a living! Welcome to Blackpest, inc.!"

Rarity laughed a little more.

"He says there's been reports of pest control problems in the area."

"Ponyville's got bugs!" Rainbow said, voice still deep and booming. "Loads of 'em!"

I let a chuckle escape me as well. "Then he says 'are you up to the task?' And I think I'm supposed to respond."

Rainbow pointed forcefully at Rarity, reminiscent of a political poster I could nearly put my hoof on. "Are you up to the task?"

It was sort of eerie to hear it in a different intonation. Hunter had never placed an emphasis on the 'you'.

"So?" Rainbow landed again, and came trotting over to join me and Rarity. "Say yes!"

I looked down at the floor, suddenly flushed. "Well…"

"Come on!" Rainbow stomped one hoof. "What else are you gonna do? Say no?"

"I usually just turn it off," I admitted.

I couldn't hear the cicadas anymore. I don't know if that's because the game had edited their sound away, or simply because the jazzy music was too loud to notice such a dull haze in the background.

I would be lying if I said I didn't want to accept Hunter's offer.

Practically every time I turned this game on, I had to fight the temptation to say yes.

"Twilight." Rarity put a hoof on my shoulder. It felt sort of funny and far away. "What's the very worst that could happen?"

I scoffed. "Uh, let's see: the game sucks me in and I get trapped inside it forever? Or-- or it leaks into me and makes me its puppet and I destroy the whole town? Is that bad enough?"

Rainbow's eyes went wide. "Yikes, Twi."

"And the best case?" Rarity asked.

That stopped me. "Um… the best?"

I hadn't considered that something good might happen.

Though I guess that shouldn't be surprising.

"I'll field this one," Rainbow said, heroically stepping in. "Best case, the game's, like, good magic, and Twilight gets some gnarly powers or forbidden knowledge or something."

"Right," Rarity agreed. "And--"

"Oh, and she totally grows wings and becomes an alicorn!" Rainbow suggested, almost excitedly, as if she were planning to enact this outcome whether or not the game granted it.

Rarity glared at Rainbow.

Rainbow shrugged. "You asked."

Rarity looked back at me. "Now, you'll agree that both things sound ridiculous," she said, with a little chuckle. "Right?"

I made a small sound of discomfort.

"Right?" Rarity prompted.

"Right…"

"Now what's the most likely outcome?" Rarity asked. "Something closer to the middle."

Rainbow raised her hoof.

Rarity sighed in exasperation. "Yes, Rainbow?"

"It's a fun game and we all have a great time playing it?" she suggested.

Rarity smiled at me. "That sounds more likely than you suddenly growing a pair of wings, doesn't it?"

"Mm… I guess," I said.

"It might not be all that exciting," Rarity said. "In fact, it might even be a little dangerous. But the odds of this game doing something truly evil are astronomically low. Wouldn't you say?"

The odds of this game doing anything at all were a mystery to me. My heart rate was already through the roof just thinking about saying yes. Should something bad actually happen…

I didn't say anything.

"It's your choice," Rarity said, stroking my shoulder gently. "But I promise you you're safe."

"Yeah," Rainbow agreed. "Pinkie promise."

She mimed a cross over her heart, then covered her eye with her hoof. Rarity duplicated the gestures.

I smiled weakly.

There was a palpable feeling when I was with my friends. I guess you'd call it 'the magic of friendship', wouldn't you? Whatever it was, it was warm. It comforted me. It made me feel as brave as Rainbow, as driven as Rarity, and as curious as I'd ever been.

I turned my gaze back up to Hunter

Dark magic has a feeling, too.

It's a bit like deja vu. Not in that it feels the same; in fact, quite the opposite. Whereas deja vu is a sudden and unexplainable familiarity, dark magic is a slow and creeping foreign feeling. It's like an odd scent in your foalhood home, or a minute difference in your reflection.

It is a feeling of wrongness. A feeling that the expected is not, in fact, what you expected. The feeling that something is hidden just out of sight, waiting to pounce.

I had felt this. Of course I had.

And yet I hadn't felt dark magic.

I was certain.

There was no reason to be so certain, but I was.

Not every familiar feeling triggers deja vu. Not every foreign thing was dark magic. That's what I told myself, at least.

The symptoms were all there, but the prognosis was wrong. It could be wrong. Of course it could.

I closed my eyes.

"Yes," I told Hunter. "I'm up to the task."

Rarity and Rainbow's eyes widened, and they looked frantically around the room, perhaps hoping that they would somehow see what I saw.

"Excellent!" Hunter boomed, jolly and warm. "What is your name, new recruit?”

I cleared my throat.

Should I even give my real name?

What other name would I give?

“Twilight Sparkle," I said, being sure to enunciate.

“Welcome, Twilight Sparkle!” His voice was always the same. It hit the very same beats, almost like verse. “It's time for you to learn about Pests!"

“He’s going to teach me about pests,” I told the girls.

Rainbow and Rarity huddled closer together, looking on with great interest, despite the empty room before them.

Hunter’s form flickered. It was a blink-and-you-miss-it sort of thing, but there nonetheless. I could have sworn his color dulled, but I’m sure it was only my imagination. There you go again, Twilight: looking for differences. Searching for reasons to be fearful.

“A Pest is a type of parasite that enters through a pony’s ear or nose,” Hunter explained. “They look a little bit like this:”

Without a sound, the image of a small worm appeared in the air before me. It was completely motionless, like the image in a textbook, and yet spun slowly about its center.

It was fat. A big, fat worm-- fatter than a caterpillar. Closer to being a pillbug than anything, I thought. One end (its front, I suppose) had a sort of snub-nose, like a leech. The other came to a dull point. The whole thing was a disgusting green-black color.

Blackpest.

Black Pest.

Of course.

“Ugh,” I muttered. “It’s a… a big worm. And it crawls into ponies’ ears.”

“Ew!” Rarity echoed my disgust.

Rainbow’s eyes lit up like a deranged little colt’s. “How big?”

“Too big,” I said.

And it was. The thought of this thing forcing itself into your ear canal… you’d feel it. It would have to squeeze and writhe.

The image vanished.

“Once inside a Host, a Pest will attach itself to the brain to feed off magical impulses,” Hunter explained. His cheeriness was not diminished. It made me feel sick to my stomach. “This can cause the Host to feel lethargic, to have trouble working their magic, and to have significant behavioral changes.”

This was a weird concept for a video game.

“What’s happening?” Rainbow whispered.

Rarity shushed her.

“You can’t see Pests from the outside,” Hunter informed me. “You will have to use your magic to reveal them, Twilight Sparkle.”

My name sounded so stilted coming from his digital lips.

“You can practice on me!” he announced.

I waited for more instructions, but none came.

Hunter Moon had returned to his original, statuesque state.

I turned to look at Rarity and Rainbow.

“Well?” Rarity prompted.

“Um…” My gaze flicked back up to Hunter, but nothing had changed. “Apparently the pests are neurological parasites. I’m supposed to use my magic to find them, and Hunter wants me to practice on him.”

“Wait…” Rainbow shook her head clear. “You mean, like… they eat your brain?”

Rarity gasped softly and put one hoof over her mouth. “Oh, that’s horrible!”

I shook my head. “No, no… he said they feed on magic.”

“But they…” Rarity made a low sound of revulsion. “They touch your brain?”

I nodded.

Rarity shrieked incoherently.

“Rares, it’s just a game!” Rainbow complained. “There’s no such thing as magic brain parasites!”

Rarity snuck a glance at me.

Rainbow gave me a sharp and pointed look, then nodded towards her distressed friend.

“Er… Rainbow’s right,” I lied. “No such thing.”

Rarity made a small disgusted whimper, but trained her eyes back on me.

“So…” Rainbow kicked at the floor with one hoof. “Can you find it, or whatever?”

I looked back up at Hunter. “I-I don’t know how. He didn’t tell me.”

“Well, figure it out, egghead!” Rainbow ordered, waving one hoof wildly. “Start blastin’ him or something!”

“That’s not how magic works!”

Rainbow scoffed. “Sure seems like that’s how it works.”

“It isn’t,” Rarity insisted, giving Rainbow a little shove. “Trust the unicorns, you brute.”

“Ugh.” Rainbow hung her head, looking not unlike a vulture. “Why do I get the feeling you two are gonna gang up on me this whole time?"

Rarity flipped her mane, and the plastic curlers clattered about like cheap windchimes. She said nothing, but the action spoke volumes.

Rainbow nickered softly and angrily to herself. She folded her forelegs over her chest with the vigor of a petulant foal.

I scratched my head with one hoof.

There had to be something here I was missing, right? Some sort of clue as to what I was meant to do?

After all, I hadn't exactly studied up on parasite-removal spells.

Should I have?

"You can practice on me!" Hunter repeated, evidently bothered by my lack of attempts.

Come on, Twilight.

It's magic.

You're great at magic.

This game is for foals, right? If they can do it, so can you.

I steadied myself, widening my stance and lowering my head to aim my horn directly at Hunter's face. It felt odd, I'll admit: preparing to perform some serious spell work in my friend's kitchen. At the break of dawn, no less.

My horn sparked, and a magical tendril curled out like steam.

The simplest solution was to reach in there and just… take it out. Right?

I reached for Hunter. Rarity and Rainbow were utterly riveted, watching in a sort of awed silence.

The tendril brushed Hunter's cheek. And I felt it.

I shouldn't have been surprised, but I squeaked and retreated.

Rarity gasped.

"Twi?!" Rainbow's front hoof hit the ground with offensive power.

"It's okay!" I said, waving away their worries. "It's… I can feel him."

"Hunter?" Rarity sat forward. "That's an odd feature, don't you think?"

I could almost feel Rainbow's mind grinding away at a crude joke, but she seemed to bite it back.

"It's alright. I just wasn't expecting it," I said. "That's all."

I reached out again.

It wasn't like touching a real pony. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It was more like touching one of those amusement park statues-- the kind caught between metal and plastic, with sun-faded colors and an odd kind of tackiness.

My magic did not glide over it. It sort of hitched. I had to fight, and fighting too hard made it dip beneath the surface of the model. Defying the game’s reality was uncomfortable. I don’t really know how else to describe it; it was like straining against gravity, or trying to fight a strong current.

His ear, of course, didn't feel like a real pony's ear. It was a dry, synthetic tunnel right into his skull.

I pushed further. The walls of the ear canal pressed down against my magic.

His skull was a cavernous void, if an oddly geometric one. No pest to be found. No mind to be found, either.

I withdrew my magic, and let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. "It's not in there," I said.

Rainbow cocked her head. "Maybe it’s hiding?”

“There’s no place for it to hide!” I exclaimed.

“Well, maybe it’s magic hiding!” Rainbow suggested, as if this were the most obvious conclusion anypony could have drawn. “Root around in there, c’mon!”

Rarity scoffed and rolled her eyes, but did not comment.

As much as I wanted to deny Rainbow’s bizarre suggestion, it did sound a bit like what Hunter had said. He hadn’t asked me to use my magic to remove the pest, after all-- only to reveal it.

My magic tinkled gently in the resounding silence. I thought of the way it intertwined with the cartridge, reaching into the electronic bits and bobs to reveal the game itself.

Maybe if I…

A new, much larger tendril twirled off the end of my horn, and I moved in towards Hunter’s face. I split this tendril into many smaller ones and reached out to grab at his head like a hungry octopus. One in each ear, one against each eye, one slithering up each nostril…

As my magic encased Hunter’s head, Rainbow and Rarity got their first look at the stallion.

“Whoa…” Rainbow commented.

Rarity merely put a hoof over her mouth.

I pushed further, deeper. My magic worked its way into every crevice of Hunter’s digital face and mind. As difficult as it was, he seemed unbothered. I could only imagine the immense pressure this sort of invasive magic would have caused a real pony to experience.

Yet Hunter only smiled brightly as I forced my magic through his eyes.

Just like the game, Twilight.

Connect.

Feel.

And, like a flicked switch, I was Hunter.

Not physically. I could still see him standing in front of me. But, at the same time, I could see myslef standing in him. The images phased into one another like a double-exposed photo.

In Hunter’s eyes, I looked so much like him.

There was only a brief moment without pain. Then, like an explosion in my head, I felt it:

The Pest.

I shrieked aloud, and Rarity grabbed me around the barrel instinctively.

It was there. Really, truly there-- some enormous thing curled up in my skull, leeching off the magical impulses I sent out. It felt quite like a hunk of plastic had instantly replaced an entire lobe of my brain.

I ripped my magic out of Hunter’s head. My knees shook, and I fell to the floor.

In only seconds, though, the ppain was merely a memory.

“Twilight?” Rarity shook me gently. “Darling, say something!”

“Holy shit! What was that?” Rainbow asked. Her voice cracked in panic.

I put a hoof to my head and moaned lightly. The pain may have been gone, but there was an odd feeling left behind. It was something like after you get an injection, and the shadow of the needle is still imbedded in you.

The shadow of the Pest was still in me.

“Well done, Twilight Sparkle!”

I looked up at Hunter. His own face was, of course, unchanged.

Rainbow and Rarity looked up, too.

“Every Pest is different,” Hunter said. “You won’t be able to find all of them with the same technique.”

Well, thank the sisters for that.

Rarity’s leg tightened around me. Rainbow reached over to place a hoof on my shoulder, too.

“Once a Pest is revealed, it will exit the Host.”

On cue, the Pest’s little snub nose peeked out of Hunter’s ear. With great effort, it managed to squirm out and landed on the floor. I think I was somehow more disgusted by the silence of its impact than any sound the game could have dreamt up.

“Be sure to exterminate it before it can find another!” Hunter advised.

“Um…” I pushed myself up a bit, watching in a frightened silence as the Pest worked to turn itself over.

“What is it?” Rainbow asked urgently.

The Pest writhed against Rarity’s kitchen floor.

“It worked,” I said. “It’s out. Now I have to--”

The Pest was righted.

It took off like a shot.

I screamed and shot onto my hooves, desperately trying to keep an eye on the little bugger.

Rarity and Rainbow scrambled, too, though their terror seemed all the more frantic in its uncertainty.

The Pest wove between my hooves with deft precision and utterly unholy speed. I don’t think I’d ever seen a mammal that could move so fast, let alone a worm.

I did my best to avoid it. To the girls, I probably looked like I was dancing on hot coals.

Then, one misstep, and my hoof came down on it.

It felt like stepping on a rotted piece of fruit.

I fought back a gag.

“Did you get it?” Rainbow asked.

I groaned. “Yes.”

Rarity all but bit down on her own hoof.

The Pest flickered away, as did the warm and mushy feeling on its innards on my hoof.

“Excellent work, Twilight Sparkle!” Hunter said. “I do believe it’s time for you to start the real work!”

I gulped forcefully.

“We've been getting reports of a pest control problem in your area,” he reminded me. “You must locate and exterminate three Pests. Good luck!”

Just like that, Hunter was gone.

“Twilight?” Rarity called to me softly. “Are you alright?”

Rainbow was looking at me, as well, although she didn’t seem to know what to say.

I took a deep breath. “I’m okay,” I said. “It was just… I’m okay.”

“Are you hurt?” Rarity asked.

“Mm… no,” I told her.

And that, technically, was the truth.

I wasn’t hurt.

I had been hurt, but I wasn’t anymore.

It was just a haunted house, wasn’t it? A spooky little game that might scare me, but couldn’t hurt me, Not for real. Not forever.

Rarity breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank goodness. You scared me.”

I chuckled. “I sacred me, too.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Rainbow asked. In all honesty, she looked more shaken up than Rarity. “What even happened?”

I flashed her a weak smile. “I’m alright,” I said. “And I think we just got to the exciting part.”