The sirens went off like clockwork, just like the haunting days before. Everypony and went to the showers in the same linear fashion as before. We had new faces today, already trained supposedly, all to recount from the burn victims that died or were exiled due to last nights fire. Everything went blandly, exactly how they wanted it to be for years from the morning wake until we reached the lockers. Everything was quiet. Everything was still. It was the same, yet different in all other ways, a subtle change, the spark before the cannonblast.

The Taskmaster bursted into the room, violently. Everypony stood at attention to him, waiting for his orders, or words depending on who listened.

“Listen up!” he shouted, “We have but one day until the rotation is reached. Tomorrow the gates will open and you will all give your best to entertain the Acroties.” I had only heard of this term months before. It was a name for a class category, unlike the six categories for what mask you had, this one was for the wealth. We would start at the bottom, Acroties, or the peasants who lived in the slums of a city’s harshly discriminated districts. If we were good we could entertain in another district for the Minstres. I had never heard of any Kre observing, too busy with handling their system I suppose. “Tonight though, I expect you all to listen to Overseer. He will instruct you on tomorrows plan for the Carnival. You have all trained for tomorrows duties since infancy, there shall be no failure allowed on this. Overseer!” Taskmaster called him, the buffoon stumbling into the room like the soul of the crow that possesses him. “If I hear any complaints, there will be punishment. Now, get back to your duties!” and just like that he left, slammed the door on his way out.

Overseer leaned against the wall, barely keeping his stance. “Alright,” he began, “you will all be given a specific assignment. I demand them to be done exactly as given, is that understood?”

Everypony nodded in agreement.

“Great. Now, magical teams are to report to the center of the stage immediately. Your assignment will be given once there. Get going!” They followed almost immediately, taking all but one unicorn from the room. “Acrobatics!” I assumed he meant the pegasus, there was only one on that team and all he did was keep the ropes tight. “Get to your usual practice areas, you’ll each get a separate assignment.” Like the unicorns, they went off. Finally, time for my team. “Handlers… and others…” I assumed he was directing that towards #20429 and me, seeing as how we didn’t exactly fit in with this team fully. “You will report to your usual duties, unless, you are a trainer. Trainers will be working with another instructor with a few creatures to prepare for tomorrow's performance. Get to it!” We went off, clearing the locker room of all but the Overseer, who I assumed went to drink himself off a bit more. Of all the ponies in this society, this unjust way of life, us show ponies deserved to get drunk the most, but stealing a sip, just a sweet sip of bliss from the star folk, was exile. Sometimes I wonder if they ever get creative with their punishments, or if its the same for every little thing.

20429 and I walked to our usual area, though he had fixed the canon already and was out of work, and resumed the daily routine. I could hear the instructors giving their orders while I fed the animals left behind. #20429 decided he would help, as we were lucky enough to be so useless in any other placement so we could watch the other perform and get a bit of entertainment. It was fast, about a quarter the time as it would for me alone with the whole to feed.

“So,” #20429 started, feeding the boars with me. “Ya think it locked?” It shocked me a little how quick he shot into a conversation starter, every other day before this would have been risky. They had to be busy watching the pre-performance to even care what two useless ones were doing with the animals. I felt I could poison each and every one and nopony would stop me until it was too late.

“Think what is locked?” I knew exactly what he was asking about. Thought I wanted deep within my sober soul to go and check on that door myself, to just see what was behind it, to see if it was even locked, to see if it was guarded, or maybe just to see that I saw some kind of illusion. I wanted to be wrong, which was odd, I always hoped for change, but this was different in some way, like I knew it was a change in things around here, but what kind of change? That door could lead me to the outside, perhaps to the reason of why things are the way they are, or it could just be a door leading to nothing special.

“The door. They went into such measures to hide it behind a wall, force us away when it started burning. I doubt they gone and locked something hidden.” This wasn’t making sense to me, still, he had a point.

“Dunno.”

“Want to find out? C’mon, they’re all focused on their stunts, who’d notice if the small, unimportant ones sneak away for a second?”

“You know exactly what they’d do if they found us poking around.”

“Exactly? For all we know they could just be putting us in a different class!”

“I said no, can we just drop it and forget about the door?”

“Fine…” He finished pouring the slop into the boar cage. The menacing creatures got specks all over from their eating style. It disgusted me, but then I remembered how close we were to these animals, I remembered how much worse we were than them.

“You want to go watch the pegasi practice on the ropes?” I asked, wanting to get away from this area for the first time in a long while.

“I… Well… Could we watch from the side?”

“What’s wrong with watching from the towers? Theres nopony on the western one.”

“I just don’t like heights…”

“But you’re a pegasus…”

“And you’re a unicorn. I don’t see you using magic.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“I’m just a dud, I’m not afraid of magic.”

“But you are afraid of a door.”

I gave him a mean look. He was cute, but annoying, I still liked him. “Alright, the stands it is.”

We walked over to the benches closest to the stage, careful not to scuff anything. We sat with our faces towards the burnt tent, they hadn’t even worked on making it less obvious of its battle scars. I couldn’t help myself but stare through the others work at it. It was something so silly to be fascinated by, like admiring the mane of another, it had little value and no sense, but some still did it without reason.

I had to force my view back on the stage folk. Down on the ground, handlers were sending their animals into somewhat generic tricks. I wasn’t impressed by their simple flips and jumps, even if a ring of fire was added in. Up in the air, the pegasi did their aerial tricks. Some dived into water, others did obstacles with artificial clouds, and some fought their petty battles against another with their bare hooves, tearing at the others wings until their opponent fell to the ground, ruined. A few unicorns were spread across the stage, some in the towers creating magical explosions to awe the crowd, others on the ground charming the beasts to handle better than those trained to tame them. Half of them were somewhere else, they were so mysterious. It felt odd for me to be the only unicorn to not know what they did elsewhere. Like, I should know, its my right to know, but I don’t now, and I never will.

It was all something so repetitive. All the acts, routines, everything just so uncreative. I couldn’t understand how this was supposed to stop violence. Maybe their lives were repetitive themselves, so this would be acceptable for them, or maybe their lives were so terrible that this was amazing, or maybe my life was interesting, much more than I thought before.

I looked back at #20429, he was slumped backwards next to me, already looking at me when I had turned. He was doing something underneath that mask of his, something that wasn’t allowed. I could see the strings tugging lashes into his skin. The masks weren’t made for us to physically commit it, but here he was, despite the pain and blood that would begin to drip down if he continued long enough, here he was, smiling.

I didn’t say anything, I didn’t even try to smile back, he wouldn’t be able to see my smile, just like I with his.

We continued to watch the performance for some time, though it probably wasn’t the best idea, seeing as how this would be everything we saw the next day. I guess we didn’t take that into consideration. I didn’t know what we could’ve done instead, perhaps get away from the crowds and enforcers, but we couldn’t leave, nopony could. It was either we stayed and watched the show, or we went off together, and to me it was clear which I would be doing.

Author's Note

This is not turning into a romance.