Vivarium

Gamma awoke in bed, alone. She sat up quickly and looked around their room. “Packer?” She called out. She got out of bed and went to the window, not seeing him before she called out his name again. Physically tired, she went to the bathroom to start her day, then bumped into the stallion.

“Hello, mother.”

Gamma walked past him without replying. She was shoved from behind and stumbled into her room, the sound of his hoofsteps quickly behind her. “What are you doing?” She asked as she turned around, only to glimpse something under the stallion. Her eyes widened and she turned around, bucking the strange stallion in the chest.

He grunted and held a hoof to where he was struck. “You should give me a sibling.” He said, coldly.

Gamma’s eyes watered as she turned her rear to the wall. “You can’t…” she said, then she screamed in his face. The Stallion’s ears folded back for a second before he approached her again. A door slammed open and Gamma heard Packer’s hooves rushing through the house. “Help! I’m in the bedroom!”

The stallion moved toward her and pushed her harder than she expected, turning her sideways. He moved around her and moved his muzzle toward her tail.

Packer galloped up stairs and stopped at the threshold, his eyes widening. He whinnied loudly and charged the stallion, tackling him to the floor where he started shouting and pummeling the odd stallion. For once, Gamma didn’t stop him, watching with a little flutter in her heart as her stallion saved her.

“If you ever come near my mare again, I’ll end you!” Packer finally shouted before he noticed his hooves. He wiped the blood on the stallion’s chest and got off of him, spitting on him before he moved to help Gamma leave the room. “I’m so sorry about that. I was just staying busy in the backyard, I never thought…”

“You’re my big stallion,” Gamma said with a smile. “I know I can count on you for everything.” Gamma led Packer down the stairs and then out the back door. “I need you to trust me, okay?”

“Okay?” Packer said as she left him standing in the backyard by a shallow hole he’d started to dig out by hoof. “Shouldn’t I stay by your side, especially now?”

Gamma giggled and kissed him. “If anypony’s getting me pregnant, it’s going to be you. I just have to do something that I know you won’t approve of.”

Packer bit his bottom lip, then nodded. “Okay, just, be safe and scream if you need me. I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”

They shared a short but passionate kiss, then Gamma left Packer behind her as she went back into the house.
Gamma closed and locked the door behind her and saw the stallion watching the repaired television as she passed. She hated the television and hoped to never see one again after today. Going into the kitchen she grabbed the kitchen knife in her magic and walked down the hallway, entering the living room quietly.

Without any warning, she brought the blade low and across the stallion’s throat with as much force as she could. She dropped the knife once she was done with the grizzly task. The stallion was still for a second, then he lurched to standing and fell to his knees, bleeding profusely from his wound. He growled like a predator loud enough to make her pee a little in fright, then he fell to the floor, out of her sight.

Gamma rushed around the couch to see him rolling under it in an impossible way. The stallion had rolled under the couch without lifting it, squeezing into a one inch gap by rolling. She lunged and grabbed his tail with her magic and lifted the couch, seeing something her mind could barely comprehend.

The same swirling waves on the television made up whatever reality he had been crawling into. She tugged his tail and he looked back at her, hissing like a snake and curling around himself impossibly so to strike her. She released him and regretted locking the door and telling Packer to stay out.

Against all her better judgment, she leapt after him and landed on a rubber slide. The stallion looked back at her, his neck having healed already but blood still stained his coat as they slid down. He jerked to the side and the slide broke into several paths, he went one way and she went another.

She screamed when she realized what she’d done and where she wasn’t. She suddenly landed in a pile of marshmallows that were each as big as her hoof, breaking her fall. She lifted her head and saw she was in a ballpit of sorts. The more she tried to move the harder it became, so she relaxed and drifted, somehow, to the edge.

Gamma climbed over the short rail and stood up in a billiard room, looking down at the ball pit that was roughly the size of her ear. She was very confused.

“Hello?” She called out. Nothing replied, not even an echo. She walked to a wall, since there weren’t any doors, and gave a test knock. The sound her knocking made changed with each tap of her hoof on the wall.

A duck quacked. A train horn blew. Paper tore. A piano key clacked without a tone. Chalk snapped.

“Hello?! Is anypony out there?”

She lit her horn and picked up a cue from a rack and tapped it against the wall; there was no sound. She struck the wall several times, put off by the lack of sound now. She knocked on the wall again.

A bell rang. A cow mooed. “Stop knocking on me!” Gamma dropped the cue from her magic.

“Hello? Let me out! I’m not supposed to be here,” Gamma shouted. She pounded on the wall in frustration. “Answer me!”

A dog whined. Something wet slapped something else. A tuba blew a short note. A hoof knocked on wood.

Gamma turned and bucked the wall in a rage, yelping as she went through it completely. She was falling, the wind was so loud she could barely think as it rushed in her ears. Her eyes were stinging from the air rushing at her. She could barely breathe.

She flailed and looked through bleary eyes for anything, but there wasn’t anything. No sky, no earth, no way to tell where she was going or when the fall would stop. Seconds felt like minutes as her consciousness began to fade.

“What are you doing here?” A voice said from everywhere around her.

Gamma was standing on a tongue. She eeped and tried to prance off of it, but everything was tongue beneath her. Her hooves were suddenly very wet and the mucus splatted up to her fetlocks. “Ew! Gross!”

The tongue wiggled and nearly toppled her to her side. “I said, what are you doing here?”

Gamma looked around and slowly teeth came into view, floating around in the space around her. “I… my boyfriend and I are being held prisoner and we want to go home.”

“That doesn’t explain why you’re here,” the voice resolved to a male’s tone. “You shouldn’t be here at all. This throws the whole experiment off!”

Gamma’s blood boiled in rage, then she noticed she was getting very, very hot. She breathed out a breath of steam and she stumbled. She thought of Packer and suddenly she was cool again. “What did you do to me just now?”

“Moi? I didn’t do anything. This place is… just be careful what’s written about you.”

Gamma shook her head. “What?”

“It’s complicated. Wibbly wobbly stuff you wouldn’t understand. Basically, stay cool and you won’t spontaneously combust.”

Gamma’s heart skipped a beat and then she grimaced. “I can spontaneously combust here?”

“Now, what did I tell you about being careful about what was written about you? You really should just read what I said.”

Gamma was growing more confused by the moment, but when text appeared in front of her with a running commentary of their conversation, she took time to read it all. She nodded and breathed calmly, thinking before she spoke.

Gamma read as her actions were put in writing in front of her and she grew confused again, then she shook her head. “Okay… what do I have to do to get you to let us go home?”

“Nothing,” the voice said happily. “You’ve already got a home. Now, if that’ll be all-”

“No, wait!” Gamma urged. “I mean, back to Manehattan. My boyfriend, Packer, and me. What do I have to do to let you send us back there?”

The voice was silent for a long moment, then the tongue rose and began to inflate to bursting. It popped and the scent of onions and mushrooms filled her snout. Gamma kicked her legs uselessly as she fell into a pool of chocolate pudding. She swam up and pushed her head out of the surface, wiped her mouth, then inhaled the breath she’d lost.

She relished the flavor, something sweet for the first time in months was a treat, if only she could have been able to enjoy it with her stallion.

She found purchase on the bottom of the pool and stood up on her hind legs, using magic and her forelegs to wipe her face and muzzle clear enough to see and speak. “What the hay was that for?” She asked as she looked around and saw all kinds of pastries floating around. A wafer passed close enough for her to smell its strawberry flavor.

Then it turned one side to her and opened what could be understood as a mouth, dropping small gummy strawberries onto her head.

“What’s life without a little chaos every now and then?” The voice mused. “You want to go home, then you have to do something for me.”

“What?” Gamma asked.

“Start it all over.”

Gamma licked her lips, then she trembled a little. “What do you mean? Like, be born all over again? Start grade school again?”

The voice laughed and tisked. “No, my little pony. Start the experiment over. Alone.”

“What?! I can’t do this shit again, I can’t even do it now. What makes you think I’d do it all over again, alone?!”

“Selflessness.”

Gamma went quiet. “Is that what the whole thing is about? Testing my resolve?”

“The end results aren’t as important; it’s about how we get there. However, now I have to wonder how important Packer is to you. Would you sacrifice yourself to save him, or will you return to stay with him in your lovely home?”

Gamma began to swim to the edge of the pool, finally realizing she was in a giant martini glass when she reached the edge. She looked down and saw she was on a table with a nice white tablecloth. She spitefully used her magic to push a glob of pudding over the edge to splatter below her.

The pudding she was in began to churn and bubble and then literally flushed her down the center of the cup. She felt herself squeezing down the stem of the glass, her bones bending in ways they never should have, and then she landed on a bed. She looked at her forelegs and saw she was wearing socks, which matched the rest of her outfit.

“A maid? Really?” She asked once she was done looking herself over. She used her magic to pull the costume off and tossed it aside. She began walking to the edge of the bed, then noticed she was wearing the outfit again. “You’re a real jerk, you know that?”

The voice chuckled. “I’ve seen you wearing much more, and less, than this, darling.”

Gamma blushed as dozens of the provided outfits were used by her and Packer over their time in the house. “You’ve been spying on me having sex?!”

“All part of the experiment.”

“Fuck your experiment! I’m a pony and I have rights, like the right to privacy, freedom, and to not be experimented on against my will!” Gamma shouted.

The sound of pages turned tickled her ears. “Having sex in the back of the cart on two different occasions, locking your son in a neighboring house, planning to trick your son into helping you leave the enclosure… it doesn’t sound like you’re doing all you can to fight for your rights when you flaunt the opposite so readily.”

Gamma snorted and noticed gummy strawberries falling to the floor. She picked one up and ate it, smiling at her long lost sweet sensation. “I’m not Princess Celestia, I’m not perfect, I make mistakes, okay?”

The voice laughed uproariously for several seconds. “Oh, you simple little pony. If only you knew what your precious Princess Celestia does to prove she’s just a pony like the rest of you. However, that’s not the point,” whistle was the only warning before a pin landed inches from Gamma’s muzzle, stabbing several lengths into and through the bed.

Gamma bounced and landed on her flank as the bed rocked from the impact. She looked up and up, finally seeing the pin’s red bulbous head over her like a giant tree.

“The point is, you attacked your son-”

“That freaking thing is not my son! He’s been leeching off of me, literally, and just tried to rape me!” Gamma shouted as she got to her hooves and tore the socks off her forelegs. “If you call him my son one more time, I swear I’ll kill him for real next time I see him!”

The voice tisked three times. “You can’t kill your own child, dear. And trust me, he is yours and Packer’s child. A little genetic tampering, a touch of magic, and you have your perfect child ready to do exactly what children are known to do. They drink your milk, eat your food, take from you for years, then leave you with nothing but memories in a house.”

“So, wait,” Gamma said, pressing a socked forehoof to her temple, “you think… that what you’re doing to us is what is supposed to happen?”

The pages of a book flipped and the voice spoke, “Well, according to several books on the topic… yes. All I’ve done is hurried the process, there’s nothing wrong with expediting the experiment to find results.”

Gamma roared and tore the outfit off of her, again. “That’s so stupid! You’re doing it wrong, all wrong! It takes years, decades to raise a child and teach it how to behave in society. I’m dying because you had that thing drinking milk from me since it showed up-”

“Ah-ah, you did allow your stallion to have some during sex.” The voice interrupted.

“That’s different! That was love, like I should have had for the foal I carried for eleven months and then gave birth to. What’re you going to do when I die from malnutrition? Get another family to raise that little monster you created? Maybe hook him up with a mare in that house to start a weird little family?”

The voice was silent, then hummed. “That’s actually not a bad idea. Once you give him a sibling-”

“I’m not giving that thing a sibling! It’s not my son, it’s some monster that sucks the live and love out of me like some changeling.” Gamma lit her horn and pulled the pillows from the bed to her so she could scream into them. “Let us go! Send us home, we won’t tell anypony about what you’re doing.”

“Oh, my little experiment, you have no way to prove that. I have a friend that would be quite… upset with me if she found out how I was learning about pony familial and social norms, and I can’t have that.”

Gamma started to cry. “So… I can’t get out? We have to stay here until we die? What would your friend say if she knew you were killing ponies just to try to learn something you can read in a book?”

“I think she’d be upset with me, but would understand that mice are dropped into mazes all the time, and they end up just fine in the end.”

“Ponies aren’t mice! We’re thinking, feeling creatures that have hopes, dreams, and futures. You can’t treat me, us, like this. How many ponies have you tortured like this? How long have you been doing this?”

The voice hummed in thought. “Long enough to learn a few things. I do agree that your species is a tad bit different than mice, but the point stands. I can’t learn if I don’t observe, which is why you’re here. You and your… mate.”

Gamma hopped from the bed and landed on the floor, regretting it immediately as she sank into it to her knees. “Is that all there is to this then?” She said, leaning down to sniff the parsnip puree and take a big bite of something different after so long.

“Don’t worry, once the experiment is over, you’ll be released with your family, if you choose to do so.”

“I want to be released now!” Gamma shouted and lit her horn. She blasted a beam of concentrated energy at the pin, which popped into a million soap bubbles.

“No. You may be the first of many to find your way here, but that doesn’t afford you any special treatment. Besides, I’ll have to take precautions to ensure your silence about your home and everything that happened.”

Gamma frowned. “Then wipe my memory and Packer’s. You clearly have the power to do it, then send us home to Manehattan.”

“As tempting as that would be, I wouldn’t have the information I need, now would I?”

“You’ve already gotten tainted results,” Gamma said, “by me being here I now know what the truth is. I’ll tell Packer and we’ll just sit around until you free us.”

“Oh, don’t try to fool me. I can tell you’re both so bored you’re practically going mad. You’re lying around, when you’re not cleaning or organizing, and Packer is digging holes to stay occupied. I have learned a lot already…” The voice went silent again. “Perhaps you have a point. I can’t learn much more the way things are going.”

“Exactly, so there’s only one thing to do, right?” Gamma asked, hopefully.

“I’m not so sure. After all, what’s to stop you from telling anypony about all this? You have to explain why you’ve been gone for so long and get back to living a life, unfulfilled.”

Gamma’s mouth broke into a wide grin. “I know exactly how to explain our absence. I’ll just tell everypony, no, wait, we will tell everypony that we eloped and spent the last three months on our honeymoon. It’s perfect.”

The voice cackled so loud her ears rang. “So, you’ll just play it off as though nothing has happened? Certainly you can’t think that will cover everything over like a paved road?”

“I don’t even know who, or what, you are,” Gamma said, “and I’m sure you can just punish us with something creative if we break our silence. I’m sure your friend would even accept what you’ve done to us if you explained that you let us go.”

Almost a minute of silence passed, then the voice spoke. “I’ve talked it over with myselves and we agree to send you back to Manehattan. Now, you can’t just return as you are, so,” there was a flash of light and Gamma was blinded by it, then she noticed she felt better. A lot better.

Gamma looked across her body and marveled at how healthy she looked. She giggled and pranced in place, noting she was on soft carpet now in a large room with a series of bookshelves along the walls and a small hot tub in the center of the room. “Thank you! Thank you, so much.” She bowed her head and noticed the smell of chlorine in the air. “Where’s Packer? He has to be here,” she said to herself.

The voice came from the water, vibrating the surface. “He’s on his way. I’ve been explaining the circumstances of our agreement to him and he’s almost done trying to attack where he thinks I am, in your name. It’s kind of cute, really.”

Gamma sat down and sighed lovingly. “That stallion is the best. He’s willing to fight some kind of god for me. None of my exes would have done that.”

There was a thump from somewhere, then Packer fell through the ceiling and right into the water, screaming loudly as he climbed out, his coat smoking. He coughed water from his lungs and hacked, looking around before his eyes landed on Gamma’s. He galloped to her and hugged her tightly, then nuzzled her.

“Oh, how sweet romance is… or so I’ve been told.” The voice commented, breaking the two apart with the carpet moving quickly beneath their hooves like an escalator. They stopped a length apart. “However, with the terms of this agreement, we can’t just have you pop back into Equestria as though you were never gone, or only gone on a honeymoon.

“I offer you this,” the voice said and two tickets appeared, one in front of each of them. They looked at the ticket in their faces for a second, then both gasped.

“You’re giving us a ticket around the nation on an airship?” Packer said, suspiciously.

“And it leaves… is this,” Gamma squinted her eyes, “wait, isn’t that the day we left?”

Packer and Gamma looked around the ticket to one another, then Packer shouted. “We’ve only been gone a day in real time?!”

“Yes,” the voice said, amusedly, “but you’ve accomplished so much. So much so, that I’m canceling all my other experiments and sending them on a cruise, too. I think I’ve learned all I can from this type of experiment. I’ll have to devise something else, something like a fun game, perhaps. But, that’s not for you to worry about. Now, enjoy the gift I’ve given you and don’t mention this to anypony, or you might just find yourself back here without my kindness and forgiveness.”

Packer scoffed. “Kindness and forgiveness my plot. You’re a monster and if we ever cross paths again, I’ll make sure you never forget me.”

There was another flash of light and the couple were standing in front of their house, blinking away stars. Gamma and Packer, facing the cart loaded with luggage turned and shared a hug. “I think we’re free of this prison,” Gamma said, kissing her stallion on the lips before she pranced to the cart. “I think we should do what he suggested and go on a honeymoon.”

“But, we didn’t even get married.” Packer reached her side and bumped his flank against hers. “Not that I’m complaining.”

Gamma rolled her eyes. “We’ll just tell them that,” she said and then felt queasy. She hurried towards the house and made it to the grass before she vomited parsnip and chocolate pudding onto the ground.

Packer laughed quietly as he held her mane back. Once she was done he patted her withers comfortingly. “What did you eat? It smells terrible.”

Gamma spat, then turned to him. “I think that’s all, but I shouldn’t eat magically made food when in a tartarus nightmare of epic proportions, brought on by some God of insanity running a messed up experiment.”

They shared a laugh, then Packer got ready to hitch up to the cart with Gamma right beside him. He started pulling with a little effort after going so long without exercise and having extra weight in the cart, but he quickly found a pace and was trotting around the corner before he knew it. He halted when he saw the exit and a tear entered his eye.

Then he saw the stallion that had caused them so much grief. Packer started walking again, passing the stallion standing on the sidewalk, staring blankly at them as they passed. “Remember,” the stallion said with the God’s voice, “tell nopony.”

The stallion’s head twitched, then he spoke in his normal voice. “Farewell, mother and father.”

“We aren’t your parents,” the couple said in unison, then shared a quiet laugh and nuzzle.

The couple felt a chill run down their spines as they hurried out of the complex and onto real cobblestone. Packer laughed and pranced in place, then hurried away from their person tartarus.

An hour later, they saw Manehattan in its glory through the trees, they both stopped side by side and leaned against one another, crying softly.

“Hey, get outta the road if you’re gonna stop in the middle of it!” A random stallion shouted as he passed them. “Stupid tourists.”

“We’re home,” Gamma said with a sniffle. “Let’s hurry and get some food before we leave for our trip… I’ve had a fluttering in my tummy for the last hour and am starving.”

“Will do, honey.” Packer said as they got back to a good pace.

“I kinda want… hmm, onion and peanut butter with pickles. Is that weird?” Gamma asked.

Packer just laughed. “You sound like a preg…”

They shared a look, then looked back along her body with curiosity. “He did say he left us a gift… what if it wasn’t just the ticket?”

“We’ll find out and be together, regardless.”