“You're a fake... I'm a fake... we're all god damn fake. What the hell have we turned into?” He muttered to himself, staring dreadfully into his own tattered reflection.
The things that made everypony feel whole and loved by others was once considered a taboo, but it had escalated into something far worse than what anypony would have expected. It was a basic form of living in these days, and anyone without it was treated no better than rotted hay. The egocentric hierarchy of society was based of of it, and there was nothing anyone could ever do to fix the situation; fake was now sought after and considered to be refined beauty. Not all of it ever went to plan as one would hope with their new-found beauty, there was a slight chance that your body may not take to it too well and end in less than pleasantly. For the few that have ever had the reactions, they hid in the shadows away from those who wished to loathe the abomination that was their body.
It was a quiet day throughout Ponyville, the rich galloped through the cobbled streets with light clicks chasing their hooves. They were most always on their way to boast about one of their new 'adaptations', as they had come to call it, or even the ones they just scheduled. They never thought about was the process of it all; surgery removing the living, organic flesh, and replacing it with a substitute, all of it able to be sculpted to the customers greatest desire. All in all, their life was centered around that of their newest adaptations, and what made them more beautiful on the outside. But while that of a true horror rested deep within their minds, the story begins just beneath their feet.
Underneath that of the beautiful cobbled streets and the ponies that walked upon them was something more vile than any of them could ever come to know. They often wondered who pumped their fresh water, their sewer waste, and how practically every other necessity was delivered without it actually being delivered. Those that reacted, and those that could not afford to have the atrocities others were committing to their bodies worked below the streets under the harshest of conditions known to ponies. They were fed barely enough to keep them alive and well enough to work, and those that fell ill were almost always executed on site. To be fair to those who lost their lives under the streets, it was safe to not consider it work, but rather slave camps. Slave camps under every city and road, spanning across the once beautiful and luxurious Equestria, hidden away from prying eyes under the earth.
There was never an escape from what they endured besides the warm consolation of death. These ponies were brutally beaten on a constant basis, bones broken and skulls bashed in. But they somehow seemed to work, even with their injuries as if they were some sort of zombies. They no longer had the personalities they once had, or even the memories of the surface. Everything they knew was the dreadful hallways their slaved every day under.
The halls were lined with rusted pipelines, some carrying fresh water, while the others carried anything from fresh sewage to that of methane gas. Water dripped from the cement ceilings and ran down the concrete walls, forming small puddles in every depression. Even with all of the potential hazards from suffocation due to poor ventilation, random pipe bursts, and the occasional cave-in, there were other things lurking in the tunnels that scared the slaves, and even those that were supposed to protect them. Even though the slaves meant almost nothing to any given pony, there were those who were sent under with heavy armor and heavy weaponry just to fight off the beats that lurk below. But sometimes, they weren't even enough to keep those... things back. There are times when stories pass by about entire camps being liberated, but liberated has a much different meaning in the world under. Liberation is just another form of death, but with less of a pain than the word itself, bringing some hope to the slaves.
All that was to be known of these creatures was their intensely violent nature, and almost nothing more than that. They could take insurmountable amounts of damage and pain, but they still had the ability to move on. The only thing that ever kept the ponies of the under ground safe was the fear that these creatures held for death, or else there would be nothing left of what was already an unknown world.
During the sunset of the fifteenth day of the new year, ponies slaved within the caverns just as they always had; patching pipes, clearing clogs, and transporting various items from town to town. But there was something much stranger about this day that nopony could put their finger on. There was something in the air; slightly different but not enough to make a major difference. The air had almost a metallic, iron like smell to it. What made that strange was the fact that little to no iron was used in the making of any pipes or patches in the underground. And this day, they had not yet received a single order as they had been promised.
Late into the night, some of the slaves ventured into the halls to the other cities just to get some answers, just as they had been ordered. Before they could get far enough out of sight, they came running back at a full sprint, fear settling over their eyes.
“They're coming...” One whimpered, the others curling into the fetal position.
It wasn't long before the prevalent scraping noises could be heard echoing through the halls. As the sound grew closer, so did that of the same metallic scent. Each pony slowly began to realize what that specific scent had been: blood. The blood of their comrades, a river running red and filling the halls with the scent of death.
In the days to come, shops ran out of food, milk, eggs, you name it. It was all gone and used by the residents of Ponyville, and they were starting to become very eager as to when they would get their 'necessities'. These necessities consisted of their fresh caviar, the most exquisite Daffodils in Equestria, and most importantly – more of their much sought after adaptations. Only if they knew the true meaning of adaptation, and what it meant to those who now watched over them with eager eyes.
Slowly, each resident of Ponyville started so seem somewhat different as seen through Fluttershy's eyes. Most of them no longer talked about their latest surgery or adaptation, but then again she hadn't ever been too fond of doing those things to her body. Just the fact that they no longer boasted about that of what they had, and the fact they no longer cared about caviar was strange to say the least. Living life with the crowd that always has to be the better looking no matter the cost was a strange thing, but it did teach her a thing or two about being real in life, and what it really meant.
Fluttershy was the only one that had continued to live in Ponyville, for the most part because she was the only licensed veterinarian within a twenty mile radius. And with her job, came the appetite of quite a few hungry critters. Day after day when she went to town, there wasn't any cat, dog, or even bird feed left to speak of. She was barely breaking even just trying to feed herself. Weeks began to pass, and nearly all of the ponies of Ponyville left their animals at her shelter to heal from broken bones, sickness, and anything else that may have happened to them. It seemed to be too much of a coincidence that they not only stopped caring about their useless caviar, but they now stopped caring altogether for that of their trophy pets worth hundreds of thousands of bits.
The less than normal behavior of the citizens of Ponyville had gone on long enough Fluttershy's eyes. She could handle the change in behavior of the ponies, because it was actually nice to not hear about every little part of their body that they enlarged just to get the prettier mares or colts. In any case, it was her time to take action. She just couldn't handle seeing so many animals abandoned on a whim just to sit at her own home when they had one of their own.
Fluttershy walked up to the first door in town that had used her as a medical service, the home of Diamond Tiara. She hovered her hoof just above the door, unsure of whether or not she would be knocking too loud, or too quiet. In a frantic choice, she did them both; knocking with force the first and softly the second. Diamond Tiara opened the door, a bleak and emotionless expression plastered across her face.
“Uhm, Hi... You kinda left your cat at my place to be taken care of, do you remember that?” Fluttershy asked in a soft, squeaky voice. Diamond Tiara stared back with the same expression, not a hint of concern on her face. She waited for a few moments, but Tiara failed to respond. “Ehm... Would you like to come pick Princess later today?”
“No,” Tiara quickly replied slamming the door in Fluttershy's face.
“Oh... My...” Fluttershy mumbled under her breath, sulking away to the next home.
No matter the words she used, or the pleads she gave, not one pony in town wanted their pets back. To top it all off, they all used the same emotionless expression with a single word: No. By this time, Fluttershy was beginning to feel the early onset of a depression. It wasn't the people in town that were causing her the emotional distress, it was rather the care of the animals that worried her the most. She had no food to feed them, and she was even beginning to portion off her own rations to help keep them healthy during these times. She was on her way back home through one of the many backroads, trying to enjoy what she could of the country.
“These ponies just make me so... angry...” Fluttershy said to herself softly, kicking a pebble in hopes of expending some stress. What she didn't expect was the strange clanging the pebble made as it disappeared into the grass.
She slowly entered the field, the grass almost covering her head. Searching for the pebble, or even where the sound had originated from seemed to interest her, especially when she doesn't remember there being anything metal this close to her own home. Fluttershy searched for roughly 15-20 minuted through the grass, with nothing to be found. With a sigh of defeat, she headed back towards the beaten path, just to step onto a solid surface with a light clank. She looked down, where there was a hole roughly the size of an average pony, partially covered with a metal plate.
Through the cracks, light shone down into the hole, lighting up a small patch of matted pink fur. Fluttershy shook her head, trying to make sure she was seeing what her eyes were seeing. Down below in the hole, lay Diamond Tiara in a pool of blood. The sound of light droplets falling into other pools could be heard, as her eyes opened slightly, catching a glimpse of Fluttershy.
Diamond Tiara's body was covered in splatters of blood, other ponies bodies laying nearby with chunks of flesh torn from their faces where adaptations might have been. Her back legs were twisted and gnarled, pointing in directions legs should never be facing.
“He... Help... … … me...” Tiara sputtered through her lips, slowly being dragged away into the dark by an unknown creature.
Fluttershy was now hyper-ventilating, never having seen anything that gruesome in her entire life, even as a medical pony. Some things just aren't meant to be seen, and for her – this was one of those things, as Fluttershy promptly passed out just to the side of the metal plate.
There wasn't much that Fluttershy could do to control passing out, it was just something that happened after witnessing some traumatic event. She woke in a sweaty panic, figures towering all around her. They let out an almost growling hiss from the back of its throat, a near threat to emphasize how powerless she was over the entire situation.
“You are... so... different than all the rest...” It called to Fluttershy with a hiss. “They want everything, and get it. But you... you only want what you need...”
“But... but why-y are you doing this...?” Fluttershy asked quietly, unsure of whether or not it heard her speak.
One of the creatures that towered around her lowered its head, looking straight into Fluttershy's eyes. It looked eerily similar to Diamond Tiara, but had large fangs protruding from either corner of its mouth, dripping with blood. “Why?” it asked. “You must not know of what we have endured for your pony kind to have this ethereal look most craved to no end... Have you ever wondered where this magic material that made ponies 'prettier'?” It asked.
“...Ye... Yes...” Fluttershy replied under her voice.
“Ponies came to our land, pillaging through towns with these intentions for 'peace'. They claimed nothing more than to need what we had worked so hard to earn,” it told her, the eyes getting visibly red. “They took our young ones, and used them as a substitute for their own old age, replacing their old and fragile body parts with that they cloned.”
“We... are an adaptive species. We have found ways to make the world work for us during hardship, and we even figured out how to force our own bodies to take the shape of whatever we desired. You see, this is where ponies found their greed to become ever stronger, killing us and using our own flesh as an additive to their own bodies, believing for some time that they owned it.
“We warned them, many a times, that they could not hold us back forever, but they refused to believe such a thing. They thought we couldn't rise from the ashes, but we did – and now we take the place of those who raped out cities in the bodies they thought they owned.
“You...” it growled at Fluttershy, “Are not like them in the slightest. Your body is pure and one of your own, not of something you took by force. We could always take from you just as they did from us,” it said with a devilish laugh, “But that wouldn't make us any better than them, now would it?”
“Uh... well... I... uh, no?” Fluttershy replied questioningly.
“There are some things out there that should never be touched... and that is of the true beauty your kind once held,” The Diamond Tiara figure whispered into her ear.
“Don't let the surface fool you,” it called to Fluttershy, walking to the distance as Diamond Tiara, fangs hidden below.
Author's Note
This is much different than the stories I normally write, as they are much less... dark, but this time I decided to try something out of my normal boundaries, so please - let me know what I can improve on.
