13: The Gribble Archipelago

Gribble's Log
Location: Treehouse
Post-Abduction Day 7
Concluded

In hindsight, my judgement of cyborgery in the case of Silver Spoon may have been premature. Though I was unable to conclusively administer the Voight-Kampff test, I must confess that all evidence points to her being some kind of organically synthesized imitation horse created in a government laboratory. Or maybe just a regular horse.

Have decided to abandon this line of inquiry for now. In meantime I will continue to watch. And wait.

"Are you even listening to me?!?"

I looked up from my notebook to see Twilight Sparkle glaring at me. I slid the notebook back into my shirt pocket.

"I am now," I said.

Twilight shot me one last dirty look, and then turned back to Silver Spoon's father.

"Again, I am so sorry about this," she said, in a much softer tone than she'd on me. "I promise it will never happen again."

Silver Spoon's dad narrowed his eyes.

"See that it doesn't," he said, with an arrogant huff. Then, he turned his attention to me. "And you, young... er... whatever you are... you are quite fortunate I've decided not to get the authorities involved. Now if you will please return my daughter's glasses, I'd like to be on my way. I have a very important dinner tonight, with some very important ponies."

I took a puff of asparagus.

"Can't," I said. "Lost 'em."

Twilight made an irritated grunt in the back of her throat, and suddenly I felt a tingling of electricity as that weird pink tractor beam of hers started rummaging around in my shirt. Before I could stop her, she had extracted Silver Spoon's glasses and passed them back to the sour-faced earth pony.

The glasses hovered in front of his face for several seconds as he appraised the cracked lens and bent frames with disapproval. Twilight flashed him a big, goofy, apologetic grin.

"I will, of course, be happy to pay for repairs," she offered.

The earth pony sighed and snatched his daughter's glasses out of Twilight's aura with his front hoof, stuffing them into his jacket pocket.

"Don't bother," he said contemptuously. "By the look of your accomodations, I'd wager you could ill afford it."

And with that, he spun haughtily around and exited the tree library, kicking the door shut behind him. Twilight glared angrily at the space where he'd stood.

I tossed my asparagus stalk onto the floor and ground it out with my shoe.

"He's hiding something," I said.

Twilight wheeled around, turning her angry gaze back on me.

"I don't want to hear another word out of you, buster!"

I felt another tingle of electricity as her tractor beam yanked the asparagus pack out of my shirt pocket.

"My smokes!" I cried in panic as she flung the pack into a nearby cupboard and slammed it closed.

"Shut it, mister!" said Twilight, advancing on me.

I backed slowly away. I had never seen a pint-size horse look this terrifying before. Her horn was glowing and sparkling with ominous alien power, and her eyes were dark, pastel pools of death.

"I don't know how they do things back in Oklahoma," she continued in a huff, "But here in Equestria, we do not go around attacking defenseless school fillies and stealing their glasses!"

I kept backing slowly away from her, until I was pressed up against the door to the cellar. Her tractor beam yanked open the door, and I fell backwards. Her aura caught me before I tumbled down the stairs. I could do nothing but flail my limbs helplessly as she floated me down into the cellar and deposited me on the small cot where I slept.

"Until further notice, you are grounded, Rusty Shackleford!"

Twilight stood at the top of the stairs, silhouetted in the glow from the library. Her horn was still sparkling, and I saw another pink aura cloud floating my way. Then, with a soft plop, a pile of parchment and a quill pen fell onto the mattress beside me.

"Now, you're going to write a long, detailed letter to Princess Celestia, explaining everything you did wrong, and everything this experience has taught you about friendship!" she said. "I expect a first draft by morning. If I like what I'm reading, then you can have your 'smokes' back!"

Before I could raise an objection, the door slammed, and I heard the bolt slide into place.

Gribble's Log
Location: Twilight's Dungeon
First Night in Captivity
0.35 hours without smokes

Not unlike the proverbial butterfly in the Amazon, my actions seem to have caused a ripple effect which has upset the power balance of this world. While I still believe my initial suspicions of cyborgery to have been erroneous, it's clear that my interrogation of the one called "Silver Spoon" has touched a raw nerve. I am clearly getting close to something, and for this reason I am being erased.

Twilight Sparkle has imprisoned me in her sub-arboreal oubliette, where I have been deprived of both smokes and snacking materials. I have also been instructed to write a long letter of confession to the Galactic Empress Celestia. All of this is doubtless some form of psychic torture ripped straight from the pages of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago; a plot to deprive me of both nicotine and sanity until I have been broken down into a meek and pliable servant of the horse-lord.

All I have to say to her is good luck. She has no idea what sort of Gribblesque forces she's just unleashed.

In spite of the bold words I'd written on the page, I could already feel my hand trembling from the early stages of nicotine withdrawal. Unfortunately, Twilight knew my greatest weakness, and had no qualms about exploiting it. Whatever else happened, I had to find some more asparagus.

I stuffed my notebook back into my shirt pocket, silently cursing myself for not preparing for this eventual situation. Even without Twilight imprisoning me, I'd nearly been left with an empty pack that afternoon. After our narrow escape from old man Spoon, I'd just barely made it to the asparagus stand in town before they closed. If I'd had any sense, I would have bought every last stalk they had well in advance, and created a secret stash down here.

"Calm down, Gribble," I said aloud. "You've been in tougher spots than this."

I took a deep breath and exhaled, once again utilizing John Redcorn's secret new age healing technique. Then, I began a careful exploration of my prison.

To the untrained civilian, this was a perfectly ordinary cellar underneath a unicorn's treehouse. A small, octagonal space made of hard-packed earth and filled with barrels and boxes and other assorted junk. However, to a professional bounty hunter and soldier of fortune like myself, it was practically an arsenal.

In the corner, I found a barrel full of daikon radishes and some spare dishes Twilight had foolishly stashed down here. If I shattered one of the plates, I could use a fragment to sharpen the radishes into spikes. Then, I could dig a makeshift tiger trap at the foot of the stairs, which I would cover with a thin layer of woven straw, extracted from the inside of my mattress. Then, when Twilight came down in the morning to collect the letter, POW! It was all over for her. Meanwhile, using my blanket and the empty radish barrel, I could rig up a filtration system and subsist for days, weeks even, by drinking my own urine—

It was then that I noticed a small window, over a shelf containing several jugs of fresh water and an assortment of shovels and gardening tools.

"Hmm, I wonder..."

I reached up, and sure enough, the latch opened easily. It would have been a tough climb for a little pony, but a biped like myself could easily clamber up the shelves and slide through the opening.

I stroked my chin, smiling, so pleased with my own cunning that I barely noticed the icy tendrils of nicotine withdrawal clawing at the edges of my sanity.

"That's right, Twilight Sparkle," I said aloud. "You have to get up pretty early in the morning if you want to get one over on a Gribble..."

I climbed halfway up the shelves, far enough that I was able to poke my head and shoulders through the window and breathe in the sweet aroma of freedom. I was about to pull myself the rest of the way through, when suddenly I paused, and scrambled back down.

I went back to my cot, and picked up the quill. I dipped it in the ink that Twilight had provided, and scrawled out a message on the parchment:

Dear Princess Celestia:

YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE.