Trial and Error: Second Edition

Chapter the Fifth: Clarity

"You owe me an explanation."

Kai stepped into his workshop wearing a scowl. He tossed his cloak across the room and onto his table.

"About what?" Fluttershy stood up. She had been sitting in the dark since he had left.

"Why did you pick Twilight Sparkle as my point of contact? You should be well aware of the fact that she has close ties to Princess Celestia. When I told you there would ideally be minimal contact with the guards, I had intended not to draw Celestia's ire. So, when selecting to whom I would be reporting, what made you think it would be a good idea to choose somepony with direct contact to one who controls the entirety of the royal guards?"

Fluttershy pressed her face against the bars. "I hadn't intended to have her report you to the guards. I chose her because she was well-read on most of my animal friends. I also thought that Spike could run the library while she was gone, so nopony else would be upset."

"Well, I'm uncomfortable having Celestia's closest friends looking over my shoulder. You'll have to select somepony else to supervise me."

Fluttershy pulled back away from the bars and hung her head. "I'm sorry you feel that way. I'll put more thought into my next choice. Did she at least make sure that you took care of all of my animal friends today?" She looked up with hope in her eyes.

"No, she wasn't available today. She was off in Canterlot with the princess."

"So, nopony was watching you?"

"Actually, somepony came along to watch me. She said she was a friend of yours, so I would guess that her word through me is just as good as Twilight's word through me. How much would you trust miss Pinkie Pie?"

"If I were to list all of the ponies I trust to take care of my home, she'd be in the top five."

"Then you'll have no problem assigning her the duty of making sure I keep my promise."

"She does like to make sure she keeps promises..."

"Then that's settled. She will watch me from now on."

"I suppose that's alright. As long as she doesn't mind."

Satisfied, Kai sat down at his table, and started shifting through his notes. The room was silent, save for the sound of rustling papers. Kai enjoyed the quiet moment, having spent most of his morning doing more talking than he had done in quite some time, and was glad to not have somepony gabbing into his ears nonstop. While Pinkie would suit his purposes just fine, she was a bit too loquacious for his liking.

Fluttershy, on the other hoof, was not used to the solitude. While she tended to like a quiet morning more than most ponies, today had been too quiet. It was too dark to see, and the only sound she could hear had come from her own movements and their echoes. She certainly felt as though she were in prison.

After several minutes, Kai stood up and left without a word, darkening the room, as his horn was the only light source. He came back minutes later with a stack of books. Leafing through them, he came to the page he desired and started scrawling a note on a blank sheet of paper.

Fluttershy had no idea what he was writing down, but part of her didn't want to know. He was an evil pony, how could he be creating something helpful? No, he was probably working on some device of torture, and she wanted no part in it.

After two hours of sitting in silence next to each other, she spoke up. "May I ask you something?"

"You may."

"You said you knew what it was like to be in a cage like this one."

"I did say that, yes."

"I was just wondering, what did you do?"

"There wasn't much to do. I just sat in my cell, waiting for my sentence to pass. Other prisoners had visitors every so often, but nopony came to see me. You're already in better condition than I was, though. The food was worse for me, and I wasn't leaving my cell to use the bathroom. I had a bucket, and once a week I would dump it out. The smell was awful. Even worse, there wasn't any airflow, so the stench couldn't go anywhere."

Fluttershy covered her mouth, not wanting to imagine those conditions. She couldn't conceive of food worse than what he had given her. "I meant, why did the guards arrest you?"

"High treason."

"High treason?" There was obvious fear in her voice.

"Indeed."

"How did you do that?"

"They were pretty sure I was planning to kill Celestia." He paused and turned to look her in the eyes. "I was not planning to kill her. At the time, I had nothing against her. I thought she was a good monarch, and a benevolent ruler of the free ponies of Equestria."

"But now you do?"

Kai turned back to his work. "My only complaint is that she had me falsely arrested. Other than that, we've never interacted. Mayhaps she's as good a ruler as I gave her credit for when I was young, mayhaps not. I'm not in a position where I want to find out."

"Is that why you don't want Twilight involved? You're afraid Celestia will arrest you again? I think she'd have a good reason this time."

"Yeah. That life was awful. That's why I live out here on my own, dependent on nopony but myself."

"Well, you needed me. Perhaps you're not as independent as you think."

"I've lived on my own for almost twenty years before I met you. I had no help in doing so, save for the ponies who wrote the books that I read from now. I can't really thank them, either, as they've all likely died before I was born. For example," He held up the book he had closed moments ago, presumably having finished collecting the data he needed from it. "This one is over five hundred years old, and contains information on how to weave cloth from that time. I've used that information to make rope, as well as the cloak I was wearing the night we met."

Fluttershy looked again at the cloak he had tossed on the table. She had originally thought that it was tattered and worn down, but it would also make sense if it was simply a poorly made replica of what was being worn centuries ago. It didn't really even look like cloth, but rather like some plant fibres that had been woven together before they were dry.

"So what you're working on requires some sort of cloth? I'm still not sure what you're making, or why you needed me."

"What I'm making now isn't really my project, per se. Rather, it's something that will make pursuing my project a smoother process. It's something I should have put together before you arrived, but I hadn't thought about that at the time. In truth, I hadn't worked out all of the details when I ventured into town yesterday."

"So it's not your big project. Is that why you've not asked me to do anything?"

"That's right. We'll work on the big project when I've finished this one. It's only another hour, but it should cut off so much time from the big one. You may even go home a few days early, in the best case scenario."

Hearing that she may have the opportunity to leave early, Fluttershy sat down and resumed her silence so as not to distract him. If whatever Kai was working on now could really cut days off of her imprisonment, she wanted to make sure it went quickly.

An hour passed slowly, as she was filled with anticipation. Kai had left the room twice in that time, coming back with more materials at each trip. Fluttershy was lying in her bed staring at the ceiling when she was pulled from her thoughts at the sound of the wooden stool scraping across the stone floor.

"It's done."

She picked herself up and stepped over to the cell door. "What is it?"

Kai smiled. "Something for you. Something that will make it easier for you to help me."