NHRD Laboratories Journal No. 7

So last night, I wrote down my thoughts and what happened to me before I was brought here, just to get all my thoughts down on paper.

This might sound silly, but I can kind of see why diaries are popular. Maybe guys should use them a bit more.

Maybe I’m just being silly, though.

So lunchtime today was… interesting.

I found out that I’m not the only prisoner, or ‘patient’, based on what the staff say, here.

But everyone else, even excluding that creepy purple unicorn, aren’t exactly… normal.

When I first got my lunch, when I tried sitting at a table with a girl who had poofy, frazzled hair, and with a few other girls who looked similar to her, they all glared at me defensively, before one of them slammed their hand over the seat defensively.

That one girl sort of… growled at me, too. Like some kind of feral animal.

After attempting to sit next to her, I moved to a table in the corner, with one other girl sitting alone.

Aside from her literally staring at me for the entire time I ate, based on what I could see from the corner of my eye, she didn’t really seem threatening.

Maybe the NHRD is doing good, and maybe they’re just trying to help these… mentally ill people.

I wanted to think that, but I wasn’t feeling too sure.

I mean, before me and that purple creature were forcibly brought here, I never thought that the NHRD used specialized units armed with tranquilizer darts, for ANY purpose.

I guess I understand them being scared by that creature, but it’s not like I a threat to them.

The people here think that I’ve been influenced by an ‘anomaly’, which I assume is that creature, and that’s why it seems that I’m in a deeper level of security than other patients.

But all the creature, who I assume was a she, based on the voice, did to me was make me ingest that sparkly fog.

That could’ve been something really bad, though.

I don’t want to think about it.

So, it turns out that all of us patients get about an hour and a half of exercise time in an underground courtyard, set up with seemingly fake lights, sometime between lunch and dinner, maybe.

I don’t have a clock, so the only base of time that I have is my sleep schedule.

Luckily, for the last year or so I’ve always had a set sleep schedule, even without an alarm.

My internal clock always wakes me up generally around 9:10 AM(even if I still lay in bed once I’m awake), and I start feeling drowsy at around 10:35 PM.

But time aside, today at the courtyard, when I was sitting on a bench by myself, as the rest of the patients either lifted weights or lurked on the outside, like me, I actually saw that purple creature again.

She wasn’t exercising either, but she immediately galloped over to me the moment she saw me, and sat next to me.

After a short moment of tense silence, she started a casual conversation, which took me by surprise.

“Yknow, I never expected humans to be so defensive,” she said, as she looked at the guards who were overlooking everyone in the large room.

I cleared my throat politely, before I briefly looked around at the guards, too.

“Yeah. Even I didn’t think that they would do that kind of thing, and I’ve known the NHRD for a while.”

“NHRD?” The creature asked.

I looked at her for a second, before my eyes shifted back to the other patients on the courtyard.

“It stands for Newfound Hope and Research Development. It’s an organization of people who have been finding cures for diseases and stuff like that.”

The creature looked at the courtyard of patients, as I did.

“I never looked deep into them, but I never thought they kidnapped people,” I said.

I looked at her.

“And to be totally honest, I don’t even know how to feel about… you.”

She looked at me, slightly offended, but mostly confused, as she asked me what I meant.

“Well, it’s just, you seem to go against any laws of nature or logic in this world. I mean, you’re a multicolored, talking unicorn.”

She looked up at her horn curiously for a second, then back at me, before I looked back at the courtyard.

“No one in this world has ever seen anything like you. No offense,” I said, still evading eye contact.

“How strange…” she replied.

For a few minutes there, things were silent between us, as I assume she was thinking about everything I’d said, and Inwas just trying to avoid talking to her.

But as the silence went on, I tapped my foot for a few moments, before I looked at her.

“Why did you do it?” I asked.

She looked at me, clearly surprised by the sudden, strange question.

“Do what?” She asked.

“That thing with your sparkly fog, where you pushed it in my down my throat,” I said. “That hurt, and it… scared me.”

She looked up at her horn again, then back at me with a raised eyebrow.

“You mean… my magic?”

I looked away for a moment awkwardly.

“Yeah, whatever it’s ca-… wait, you have magic?” I asked, as I looked at her again.

She nodded.

“Of course I do. Don’t all of you?”

She looked out at the courtyard.

I scratched the back of my neck.

“Err, no. No we don’t.”

She was visibly surprised by this, as she looked at me with wide eyes, then down at the floor, as she rubbed her chin with a hoof.

“No magic?” She asked, mostly to herself. “I have to get out of here.”

She looked at me innocently.

“Do you wanna escape from here?” She asked simply.

I felt fear and worry course through my body once she said that.

“Shh!! I said quickly. “You know the guards can hear us, right?”

“No they can’t,” she said immediately.

My eye twitched a bit, as I looked at her, as she looked at me with complete seriousness.

“What I mean is,” she started. “It may not seem like it, but right now, you’re the only creature who can hear me talk.”

I raised an eyebrow, before she continued.

“When I first arrived here and tried talking to you, I realized that my vocal cords were different,” she started. “I knew that in Equestria verbal communication was possible for nearly all creatures because of the innate magic of the world.”

I continued looking at her, still confused.

“So, I had to resort to something more drastic,” she said. “I used my magic so that my vocal cords could… sort of mimic yours.”

I looked at the courtyard, and shifted my sitting position, as this was a bit uncomfortable.

“It’s not a spell that I fully understand, but I do know that it connects just the two of us, where you can hear me and I can hear you,” she said.

She must’ve noticed that I was pretty uncomfortable, because she asked me what was wrong.

I said it was nothing, before she shifted a little bit closer to me, and looked at me, as I looked at her.

“Look, I don’t want to scare you,” she said. “I said it before, and I’ll say it now; but I‘m not here to hurt you.”

She sighed lightly as he faced forward.

“All I want… is to go home. It’s all I have left now.”

I looked at her, as she closed her eyes and folded her ears.

I didn’t want to think deeply into what she meant, but I slowly started to rub her back gently.

She jumped for a second, but nudged into the feeling of my hand pretty quickly.

After a minute of comforting her a bit, I removed my hand from her, but moved a little bit closer to her.

I asked her what her home was like, and when I did, she spent the next few minutes patiently telling me some really basic aspects of what her world was like.

By the time she was done explaining, I was quite surprised by everything I’d heard.

Horse goddesses controlling the sun and the moon? Pegasi? And she listed off quite a lot of other mythological creatures, too, but she didn’t really tell me anything about her life, which I guess was fair.

Soon after she was done explaining her world, the guards around us told us it was time to go back to our rooms.

She then got off the bench, and looked back at me.

“Well it was nice talking with you,” she said with a small smile, before she started leaving.

“Wait! My uh, my name is Jay,” I said, as I gave her my own small smile in return. What’s your name?”

“Twilight, Twilight Sparkle,” she said.

I almost grinned stupidly as she said that, but controlled myself, and gave her a wave goodbye instead.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you later, Twilight.”

“And I’ll see you later, Jay,” she replied with a smile, before she started trotting to the west exit, and I stood up and started walking to the east exit.