In Which Sombra Grapples With an Apparatus as Evil as He

Sombra was waiting.

That had never happened before.

He was standing in line. And he was waiting. And it was voluntaryish.

When the line moved forward, he followed it with a sort of dazed automaticity. He had become unmoored, and following the line somehow seemed the best route. He was Sombra! He didn’t wait! …he told himself as he continued waiting and making no attempt to break out. What was this place doing to him? …Perhaps he ought to study it. Something that could so thoroughly, so sinisterly, so quietly break even him was something to be treasured, the most beautiful of black gems to hold a pony’s soul in perpetual torment.

So. Where to start? Obviously, this place was part of the bureaucracy. It handled necessary matters. It was, most unfortunately for everyone else, indispensable. And if ponies needed to use it-

“Sombra?”

The addressee flinched as someone tapped him on the shoulder. He whirled around; one of his subjects-to-be was gawking at him. Sombra nearly bit his face off out of reflex.

“Sombra?” the pony repeated. “King Sombra?” He started grinning. “Holy Celestia, dude, it feels like it’s been a thousand years! I almost didn’t recognize you!” His face immediately darkened, with narrowed eyes, clenched teeth, and flattened ears. “You owe me money.”

“I beg your pardon?” Sombra asked. (He was after owing ponies money; the concept was merely alien to him.)

“Remember the last tribute you extracted from us before you clapped us all in irons?” the pony said. “Well, I ran the numbers-” His expression twisted into a snarl normally reserved for the unspeakably vile. “-and you overcharged me.” So it was in the right place.

“Give it a rest,” somepony else said. “It’s just a tiny tax refund.”

“Hey!” said the first. “Three bits and twenty-two pieces is three bits and twenty-two pieces!”

“That won’t even buy you a jar of applesauce in this day and age,” mumbled Sombra. (He was after jars and applesauce.)

“And yet you owe me it!” the pony proclaimed. “I shall not rest until I am given what I-! Hey, can you move forward? It’s your turn.”

Indeed it was. Finally. Sombra stepped forward and found himself face-to-face with Red Tape once again. She was still observing him with the same vacant disregard. He found it in himself to ignore it, held his head high, and proclaimed, “I need a form.”

“Most ponies here do, sir,” said Red Tape.

Sombra bristled, caught himself, and continued, “Specifically, Cadance is turning over control of the Crystal Empire to me. How can this proceed?”

“You need form 9941-M,” Red Tape said immediately. “You can find it right in there.” She pointed at a door off the main room that looked oddly out of place. Sombra couldn’t put a hoof on it, but it seemed innocuous enough. Perfect. (He was before “innocuous enough” had come to mean “hiding something terrible”.)

“I’ll be back momentarily,” he said, and stalked through the door.

Beyond was a large room filled with nothing but filing cabinets. A very large room. The walls on either side of him seemed to stretch for further than the building could allow, while the aisles of cabinets reached into the distance. He shrugged it off. Form 9941-M was the only thing he needed. Now, where to find it?

There was a sign on the ends of the aisles. Sombra took a look at it. Just numbers. He selected the one that seemed like it would take him to 9941-M and started walking.

On a whim, he pulled open one of the filing cabinets. Inside was a pile of blank forms, all of the same kind. “1290,” he muttered. “Authorization for a… block party?” (Sombra was before block parties.) “Pfeh.” He dropped a sheet of paper on the floor and slammed the drawer shut harder than was strictly necessary. “Pointless minutiae,” he muttered. “Why do they need forms for that?” Authoritarianism was such a wonderful thing, particularly when he was the authority.

He kept walking. The aisle didn’t seem to grow any shorter. He occasionally passed cross aisles, but he never got any closer to form 9941-M. He took a closer look at the forms he was passing. 1290-8RT-J, expedited authorization for block parties on rooftops. 1290-BW4, authorization of extended block parties. All forms of similar types, similar numbers, somehow unchanged across… how long? It had to be changing sooner or later. He persisted.

He persisted on and on and on. Surely, this couldn’t all fit within the same building, could it? Not within the same city. He was still in the 1290 forms, but the identifiers were somehow still getting longer and longer, the names more inane and specific. His legs aching, he came to a rest at an intersection of aisles and looked up as he rolled his shoulders. Drawers towered above him like cavern walls and he couldn’t see the ceiling. The void was swallowing up the drawers, and had decided displaced kings were on the menu as well.

Discord came slithering out of one of the other aisles, a sheaf of papers in claw; when he saw Sombra, his face lit up with a smile (which was fortunate, given the dim lighting). “Well, hello! I was wondering if you’d ever make it back here!” he said cheerfully. His words echoed sonorously in the vast hall.

“Where…” Sombra looked down all the aisles. They extended off towards infinity, and he was getting a sneaking suspicion that they probably extended beyond it. “Where are we?”

“We’re where the forms are kept.”

“…I can see that.”

“Then why’d you ask?” Discord started thumbing through his papers. “I believe that’s all of them… Red Tape did say-”

“Why is this place so… vast?”

“Oh, you know.” Discord waved a claw dismissively. “Thoroughness. They wanted to capture every conceivable possibility, no matter how specific. Whatever you’re looking for, you can find-”

“Hello?” a hoarse voice croaked through the air. “Anyone? Is some-” A sharp, hacking breath. “Is someone there?”

A stallion, emaciated and clad in rags yet clutching a stack of papers close to his chest, stumbled out from one of the aisles. He surveyed Sombra and Discord with eyes wilder than a party pony in a bakery. “Live ones!” he wheezed in an oddly high-pitched voice. “I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve seen your type around…” He collapsed onto the floor, cackling madly.

To Sombra’s surprise, Discord was at the stallion’s side immediately, delicately picking him up and cradling him in his arms. “Oh, you poor thing,” Discord said softly. “How long have you been in here?”

“Longer than you think! Longer than you think!” the stallion screamed. “But that’s the nature of the bureaucracy, isn’t it? You’re always almost out, no matter how long you’ve been running. Almost! Almost! Almost!”

“Don’t worry, you’re safe now.” Discord scratched his back, almost affectionately. “Have you found everything?”

“Everything except a reason to live!”

“Then let’s get you out of here.” With a pop, Discord was gone. Half a second later, he’d returned with a corn, except without the stallion. “They really should put up maps in here,” he mused. “Ponies keep getting lost.”

“You… saved him?” was all Sombra found it in himself to say. The idea was as alien to him as aesthetic originality.

“Of course I did,” Discord said with a huff. “Being stuck in this place isn’t something I’d wish on my worst enemy. Not least because, depending on who my worst enemy is this moon, she might actually enjoy it…”

“You plunged the entire world into a maelstrom of chaos and panic,” Sombra observed. Oh, to have witnessed it himself…

“Yes, and I’d love to do it again, but I never allowed anyone to get lost in the bureaucracy,” Discord snapped. “What sort of boring, heinous creature do you think I am?”

“Then tell me,” snapped Sombra. “I’m looking for form 9941-M. Where is it?”

Immediately, Discord pointed. “Thirteen aisles down, take a left, and just keep following the aisle until you find it.”

Sombra blinked. One of his ears drooped. He quickly righted it out of a fear of looking silly. Then he narrowed his eyes. “Why do I get the feeling that this is a trick?” he asked. You could never trust anything Discord said. Except when you could. Figuring out which was which was… tricky.

“I’m not quite sure,” Discord said. “Presumably because you’re an idiot with an incredible losing streak. You might as well check it out; it’s not like that hollow head of yours has any other ideas. Ta-ta!” And he was gone.

Silence fell so completely that it echoed; Sombra tried saying something, but sheer quiet swallowed it up. Or perhaps there was something else in here…

Sombra swallowed his pride and the nervous spit in his mouth as he followed Discord’s directions. Sure enough, there it was: form 9941-M. Surprisingly comprehensive, it was.

Something, perhaps metal, groaned in the hungry void, its baleful howl bouncing up the aisles. Sombra, most certainly not disturbed by the uncanny space of this organized labyrinth, immediately set about retracing his steps. Perhaps by luck, perhaps by rigidity of rule disallowing any unauthorized changes in space, he eventually found his way back to the main room. He shut the door behind him and, through sheer strength of will, managed to convince himself that he wasn’t unnerved in a way he’d never been before, not even when staring death in the face because of- (But he wasn’t like that, so why was he going into so much detail about it?)

Whatever. He was out. Sombra looked at the form he’d retrieved.

Yes. This would do quite nicely. Nice and neat and surprisingly thorough. Sombra bared his fangs in that aggressive way of predators everywhere. In other words, he smiled. All he had to do was fill out one form.

(Sombra was before fate started frequently succumbing to temptation.)