The rain was coming down hard. His hooves splashed through puddle after puddle of the murky water, drenching his saddlebags and light-grey coat. This mattered little to him, at the moment, as his mind was set firmly on the task of reaching his destination.
"There!" his companion yelled, pointing a hoof at a building.
Without hesitation, he ran up and opened the door.
"S- Sweetie Belle!?" was all he was able to stammer out before a hoof from behind him grabbed him around his mouth...
***
Earlier that day...
It had been raining all week, leading up to this doozy of a storm. The local farmers had complained about the lack of rain in recent months to the weather department, who, after a brief investigation, discovered that Sunny Skies had changed the schedule to include almost no rain. In order to make up for it, this week was scheduled to be the most rainy week in years.
Rumble sighed as he gazed out the window. School was almost out for the weekend, and he had nothing to do. All of his friends would be busy with their families, celebrating the end of the rain, most likely with a picnic. His family was different. They adored the rain, and had been enjoying the week itself, rather than its end. Rumble, on the other hoof, did not share in his family’s adoration of the dreary weather.
"It looks like we're done for the day!" Miss Cheerilee called from the front of the room, bringing cheers from the majority of the foals. "The rain is still coming down very heavily, so feel free to stay until somepony comes to pick you up!" she said before beginning to pack up the work she needed to get done that weekend.
Most of the foals accepted her offer, opting not to walk through the torrent. Rumble looked around the room. One trio of fillies caught his attention. They don't have cutie marks, he thought, just like me... It’s not like I’m doing anything this weekend.... After an internal groan and a quick shake of his head, he decided to talk to them.
"So I was thinking we could try writing a book!” the unicorn amongst them was saying. "I've been doing a lot of reading, and it doesn't seem that hard!"
"Uh, hello," Rumble said, cutting off the retort the orange pegasus was about to give. "I was looking around the classroom and noticed none of you have cutie marks-"
Suddenly, his personal space was being invaded on levels he didn't know were possible, and he stumbled backwards, falling on his flank.
"Did you want to join the Cutie Mark Crusaders!?" they asked in unison, smiling wide.
"What's that?" he asked.
"The Cutie Mark Crusaders!" the yellow earth pony exclaimed, shaking her bow as she moved her head in exaggeration."Crusadin' for Cutie Marks!"
Apparently they don't know what 'redundant' means, he thought. "So it's basically you three going around trying to find your special talents?"
"Yup!" the pegasus answered.
Seems okay, he thought. Maybe if I join I'll get my cutie mark!
"Alright, I'll join," he said, causing their eyes to light up. "What are your names?"
"Sweetie Belle!" said the unicorn, bouncing excitedly at the prospect of a new friend
"Apple Bloom!" said the earth pony.
"Scootaloo!" the pegasus said, fluttering her wings.
"I'm Rumble," he said. "So, is there an initiation ritual or something?"
Sweetie Belle brought a hoof to her chin. "Well, the three of us formed it together, and nopony else has joined since then, so we've never really considered it..."
"Cutie Mark Crusader hazers?" Scootaloo offered.
"What would that mark even be?" Apple Bloom asked.
"A whip? Ugh, nevermind, we're getting off track," said Sweetie Belle. "The only thing I can think of that we would need to do would be... to get you a cape."
"A cape," Rumble deadpanned.
Practically on cue, the three of them pulled out capes from their saddlebags. Each one was red with gold underneath, with an emblem of a rearing pony on a blue shield.
"So I'm getting one of those?" he asked apprehensively.
“Yeah, but we don’t have any more....” A look came over Sweetie’s face. A look full of eagerness, with a hint of... mischief? He must have imagined it. When he looked harder, he couldn't find it.
“We’ll just have to make another one. You’ll have to come home with me.”
He didn’t particularly want to, but it wasn’t like he was doing anything else. Thunderlane would be working all weekend, his parents were visiting friends out of town, and he really didn’t feel like rereading a book from his collection for the umpteenth time.
“I guess,” he said. “I’ll just tell my brother when he gets here. When is somepony coming to pick you up?”
Sweetie looked rather downcast at his question. “Nopony is coming... my parents are on vacation and my sister is... busy. With work.”
Scootaloo looked over Rumble with a keen eye, eventually saying, "I don't know about this, girls. I don't think his heart is in it. He'll probably end up being more annoying than friendly."
Way to be friendly, he thought.
"C'mon, Scoots, that's not fair," Sweetie said. "I'd expect something like that from Diamond Tiara."
Apple Bloom looked confused. "Who's Diamond Tiara?"
Sweetie gave her a strange look and said, "It's not important."
Before any of them could inquire further, Cheerilee called, “Rumble! Your brother is here!”
"Alright, let's blow this pop stand!" Rumble announced, bringing confused looks from his new friends. "It's something my brother says... nevermind."
He took up his saddlebags and made for the door, Sweetie Belle in tow. When he opened it, he found Thunderlane shielding himself from the rain with a puffy white cloud that contrasted sharply from the ones lining the sky. His brother's expression quickly turned from mild boredom to interest as he noticed Rumble's company.
"Woah, lil' bro, who's your girlfriend?" he asked with amusement.
Sweetie Belle looked discomforted by the presumption, but Rumble, having heard this line many times before--and not always with fillies--didn't flinch.
"This is Sweetie Belle. I just joined some club she's part of, so I'm going home with her to get initiated."
Thunderlane was clearly enjoying the wild direction his mind was running in. "Well, hello Sweetie! Treat him nice and I think we'll get along just fine!" Thunderlane smiled. "How long will you be staying?"
Sweetie, eager to get a word in, recovered quickly from Thunderlane's jokes. "What time is good for you?"
"Hm... Mom and Dad are away, and I've got work after six... could he be home by then?"
The perky unicorn's spirits dampened a little. "No, it'll take longer than that... maybe another time?"
The older pegasus grinned. "Nah! It'll be fine. He can spend the night for all I care, as long as you two aren't getting too passionate with the mouth hugs!"
"What?" they both deadpanned.
"Nothing,” he said, chuckling at his own joke. “I'll catch ya later, Rumble!" With that he was off, walking for fear of being blown astray should he have tried to fly.
Rumble watched him go, waiting briefly for him to disappear into the wind and rain. "Well, there's nothing keeping us here. We might as well get this over with," he said, eyeing the storm with fear. He took one last look around the room before crossing the threshold into the tempest.
He could barely see. He knew Sweetie wasn't far behind, but only because she held his hoof for fear of getting separated. I should have asked Thunderlane to walk us there, he thought. He struggled through for a few minutes, doing his best not to lose his nerve.
“There!” Sweetie Belle yelled, pointing a hoof at Carousel Boutique.
He ran straight for it and threw open the door. Standing inside was Sweetie Belle. How was that possible? She was right behind him, wasn’t she? There was something wrong. Her eyes were giving off an odd red glow.
“S- Sweetie Belle?”
***
When he woke, he couldn't see clearly. All he could feel was pressure on his back, as if he were laying down. As his vision came into focus, however, he realized there wasn't much to look at. Beyond a small circle of light cast by a lightbulb directly over him, there were only dimly lit walls. The circular room couldn't have been more than six meters in diameter, and the only feature of the walls was a small break, wide enough for a pony to walk through, behind which was another wall. Thinking back, Rumble failed to recall how he got here. He couldn't see what was on the outside of the inner wall from his position.
He attempted to stand up, quickly finding he couldn't. He then noticed each of his hooves was was tied to a corner of the table he was lying on with a leather belt.
Leather. He shuddered at the implications.
"Hello?" he called. Though there was no immediate answer, he heard the muffled jingling of metal from somewhere just outside of his prison.
"Sweetie Belle?"
The jingling grew closer, eventually joined by the rolling of wheels. A cart of tools appeared through the gap in the wall, followed by Sweetie pushing.
“Sweetie Belle! Where are we?” he asked.
“In the boutique, silly!” she said with a grin.
Rumble, needless to say, was confused. He had been in here once or twice and couldn’t think of where they could possibly be.
“Where in the boutique?”
“Just down the hall.”
Now that couldn’t be right. He would have remembered such a peculiar set up. At that moment, his memory came flooding back to him, filling his head with disturbing images of what had happened.
“Wait a minute, you attacked me!”
She smiled. “Good, you’ve caught on. Some ponies never do.”
He struggled to remember the exact details of what happened just before he was knocked out.
“You were inside... but you’d been behind me the whole time...”
Rumble’s eyes grew wide as he began to quiver in fear. The dots were connecting in his head, and he didn’t like what they were showing him. He struggled to maintain composure as panic set in.
“You saw my proudest creation,” she said, the Sweetie with the strange eyes stepping out from behind her. “Allow me to introduce you to Sweetie Bot.”
As he gaped at the artificial filly, he noticed something he didn’t have time to before. Rather than a coat, the being was covered in sheet metal.
“A- a robot!? How is that even possible!?” he exclaimed, quite disturbed.
Sweetie’s face grew dark; her mechanical counterpart’s remained stoic.
“It’s nothing new. It’s actually quite old technology. The right spells on a shell made of the right parts is all you need. But these fools that run our world are too scared of progression to try something like this.”
Could it really be that simple? “What kind of parts would those be?” he asked, instantly regretting it as a gruesome thought entered his head.
She looked at him curiously, as though considering something that hadn’t crossed her mind before. “Do you remember before when I mentioned a filly named Diamond Tiara?” she asked, walking around him to the back of the room, the table turning to follow her. She stopped in front of a panel he had been unable to see before, opening it, and sliding out one of several racks.
The sight that met his eyes nearly made him retch; a mass of guts and pink fur matted with blood, nothing outside of the organs was identifiable, save a flap of skin depicting a diamond studded tiara.
"That is sick," he said, doing his best not to throw up.
"That's progression," she retorted. "Something the princesses are afraid of. Taking the scum of our kind and using them for the better interests of science."
"And another thing; why haven't I ever heard of this Diamond Tiara?"
Sweetie looked at him with an impressed look on her face. "I'm starting to like you. Even having seen your fate, you still give in to your curiosity. It's really quite simple; just more that the princesses are afraid to tamper with," she said with a slight scowl. "You know that all ponies are connected to leylines. It's how unicorns cast spells and pegasi control weather, amongst other things.
"What they don't tell you is that this connection is through the soul, which is also where memories and sentience are created." Her face lightened. "With a proper understanding of how it works, you can sever the soul from the leylines and, with a reversal spell, erase all memories that the pony ever existed."
Rumble had heard quite enough. This unicorn was obviously insane, but at this point his only hope might be to play interested.
"How do you hide this from your sister?"
Evidently that was the wrong thing to say. All of the excitement in her face left in an instant.
"My mother was raped and died giving birth. I've never had a sister, and I never could. She only exists in an abstract form. Just like removing things from the leylines, I can add to them. I've covered the entire boutique and everything that ever comes in with perception filters. They even work on me. It makes being me... bearable. But recently they ran out of energy. They were some of the first works I did with leylines, and I hadn't figured out how to wire them back into the source. So Rarity's been 'sick'."
If anything, that scared Rumble more. She had nothing to lose, and was powerful enough to make ponies think there was a sixth element of harmony, something he had trouble doubting even now.
Just keep playing, he thought.
"That must be hard," he said with as much sympathy as he could muster.
"It does get lonely. That's partly why I built Sweetie Bot. Unfortunately, I'm not so experienced with this type of thing yet, and at this point she's not much more than a bodyguard."
Come to think of it, that thing hasn't done anything since it walked in here.
"That's why I keep collecting. I need enough material to make a properly functioning organism. However..." she trailed off, giving him a strange look. “Even when she's working right, I'll be missing the company of a proper, living being. More importantly, a stallion."
She can't be serious! We're barely eleven!
"What do you say?"
I can't believe I'm going to do this.
"I'd be honored to join a mare as intelligent as you," he said, mentally retching.
She climbed onto the table, and, before he could ask what she was doing, planted a firm kiss on his lips. It lasted a very short time, ending with her promptly jumping off the table.
"Thanks for the acting exercise. I realized I needed the practice after those slip ups today. You were fantastic."
His blood ran cold. She had known the whole time. His mind barely had time to register that fact before he was unconscious.
