Love Songs and Tooth Picks

Well, as it turns out, grass actually wasn’t all that bad. Not that good, mind you, but not all bad. It didn’t really have a taste, like chewing wet, crunchy air. Either way, it was enough to silence some rumbling stomachs. Honestly, it tasted better than my own cooking. That’s not saying much, seeing as how I once burned an apartment down trying to boil water, on an electric stove. I still don’t know how I lit water on fire. But I did, and then I panicked and threw it. The whole place was in flames in minutes.

Anyways, back to what you are here for. We all ate grass for several minutes, in relative silence, until I noticed Snow and Guyra having a conversation.

“I agree with you wholeheartedly Guyra, these mares are absolutely crazy.”

“I just don’t get why I feel so compelled to hit on them. Never had to deal with that as a woman, I was completely asexual.”

“Wait, you used to be a she?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Heart used to be a he.”

It was at this point that I looked up from the grass and walked over to them. “Okay, whatever caused all of this, is a serious ass. Makes a chick turn into the stallion version, makes a guy turn into the mare version. That’s just not even funny right there.”

Guyra looked at me with a quizzical look. “Well, that certainly is… an interesting situation. Wanna trade?”

“I would do anything to be able to… almost anything.”

Snow shrugged his wings. “I think it’s kind of funny.”

Guyra and I both glared at him, and in a strange moment of unintentional synchronicity, said “You like your reproductive system the way it is, right? Would you be laughing if we gelded you right now?”

We both looked at one another once more. “That was weird.”

I blinked, we had done it again. “Stop that.”

“No! I’m not doing it! You are copying me!”

“STOP THAT!”

“I’m not doing anything you idiot! It’s you! Stop saying the same words as me at the same time as me!”

“I’m not doing it intentionally, I swear! It has to be you!”

Snow just coughed his throat clear. “You are both idiots.”

I decided to ignore that comment. It seemed Guyra did as well. “Okay, seriously, let’s just both say something completely random and break this whatever it is, alright?”

We nodded at each other, and paused for a moment. “YOUR MOTHER HAS AIDS!”

“Well, that didn’t work.” We both rubbed our chins in contemplation.

“Hey Gate! You’re the smart one! Fix this!”

She looked over her shoulder at me. “Why? It’s funny to watch you both make each other mad, as opposed to the rest of us.”

“JUST HELP US STOP DOING…. THIS!”

“Ugh. Fine.” Gate trotted over to where we stood. “Heart, what’s the meaning of life, the universe and everything?”

“42.” I glared at Guyra for saying it as well.

“Okay, how about this, you should both have a different answer for this one. Where were you born?”

“Kennesaw Hospital in Marietta Georgia May 1st, 1995. Three twenty two AM. In the emergency room, Mother never got to the maternity ward fast enough.”

Gate looked a tad surprised. “Well, on such a long sentence even. Either you two planned this, or is that true Guyra? Exact same as Heart?” Guyra nodded.

“Well, you two might be long lost fraternal twins or something. Unless your mothers were side by side when it happened, or you two are just the same person? I don’t know. Magic is weird. Let’s try something else.” Gate stuck a hoof in my mouth. I pulled it out immediately.

“Eugh! The fuck Gate, I think you stepped in something!”

“It worked didn’t it?”

“Huh? I… guess it did! Neat!”

“Your ears are twitching, kind of like your hands used to.”

Guyra looked at me. “Your hands did that too?”

“Let’s just stop talking about that stuff! This is getting kind of creepy!”

I took out my lyre and let it play a simple tune to stop the twitch.

Gate just walked back over to where Twinkle and Love were staring at us. “Called it! I fucking called it! Exactly alike! You owe me twenty dollars Twinkle!”

The white unicorn in question just rolled her eyes and went back to eating.

We were walking once more. Nearly as far as any of us could see was just open fields, save for the slowly shrinking city in the back ground. I don’t know where we were, what time it was, or how long we had been walking, but I was bored. I was really bored. I was as bored as a fencepost.  Eventually, I decided to start annoying everypony.

“Where are we even going?”

Gate just shrugged. “Iunno, away.”

“Where is ‘away’?”

She pointed a hoof back towards the city. “Not that way.”

“Why not?”

“People want to kill us, remember?”

“We don’t know that for certain, they might have been acting in retaliation. All they did was try to gas us first, that probably was intended to knock us out harmlessly. If it wasn’t for us panicking and fighting back, they probably wouldn’t of started firing lethal rounds.”

“So, you want to go back and make nice with all of the big scary men with big shiny guns that want to introduce you to their friend mister bullet? Go ahead.”

“Well, you’re just no fun. Do we even know who they were?”

Guyra chimed in. “Couldn’t of been Army, National guard, or marines. There are no bases or even recruiting stations close enough. If they were going after you guys because of what Heart did in the park, it would have taken them longer to get military force authorized for use and get something planned. No, it would have to of been civilians that just really don’t like you. That or it might have been some underground or organized crime group, maybe mercenaries? I don’t know. They were organized and prepared though. Definitely trained, some of them might have been ex-millitary.”

I gave him a funny look. “How do you know all of that?”

“I was wanted to join the reserves in high school, ended up not doing it since there aren’t any major recruiting facilities nearby. I didn’t want to travel too far away for training either, so I just changed my mind.”

“Well, that cuts out the whole ‘Government wants public to shush’ idea that I had. Let’s see, who do I know that would want to kill me for doing that…”

Gate grumbled. “I know someone. Remember that gas station guy? He might have had something to do with it. He was the only one who saw us, until you ran off to the park.”

“You really think it was that gas station guy? The creepy old man who tried to rape me? How would he go about organizing that many people to kill us?”

“It’s just an idea, Chill your nuts.”

My head hang low with another sigh. An all too familiar poking sensation suddenly caused a ripple of agonizing pain through my body. "Okay, someone PLEASE just rip my mane out or something. Or maybe get me a comb?"

The sun was high, the air was still, and all was silent as our make shift company of six trudged along  We had long since run out of things to say to one another, until a small mass of trees came into sight. Gate was beaming with excitement at finally having something to do besides walk.

"So, I say we take a break in those trees, all in favor?"

A chorus of grumbling 'Aye's could be heard, so our path veered off to the left.

The little patch of woods was coming closer now. We had all come to an unspoken agreement that it would provide a wondrously shady area to lay our heads for a minute. I smiled contently as we approached, weary from two days of walking.

We all stopped as we neared it. As a precaution, Gate had asked Twinkle and I to scan for anything alive and mobile in there. When we reported nothing out of the normal, we all happily entered. Snow seemed hesitant at first, obviously checking if he could look upwards with ease.

We all decided to sit in a small clearing of grass within the woods. It wasn't very wide, so the tree branches of the surrounding pines covered most of our view of the sky, but we didn't complain. We had a nice spot to sit and rest on cool grass, with no worries about being seen.

I had been sitting alone and away from the others, tuning my Lyre and Violin at the same time, when Guyra sat next to me. "So," he said, "any chance you could teach me how to play?"

"Huh?"

"The Lyre, I've got a picture of it on my ass and I have no idea how to even play one."

"Oh, you'll have to learn to use your magic first. You can either focus on the act of it until it becomes a thing, practicing on increasingly large/complicated objects, like Twinkle did to learn; or you can learn it how I did, not even realizing you just did magic until your already familiarized with it."

"How do you do MAGIC, and not even realize you did it?"

"Well, that was the first time I did it consciously, just sort of willing the TV remote to my side."

"I learned to play the lyre when I still had hands, a few days ago, on sheer and absolute instinct. That was also the first time I did magic in general."

"Golly gee, that sure was helpful!" Oh how his sarcasm was making me want to strangle him with his own- Never mind.

"Alright, look. You do it a little like this." I set the violin in it's case and focused on my lyre, and began to play. "It really is a rather simple thing to do. Just clear your mind of all but the song, let the magic flow through your horn, and through the Lyre. After that, the music is free to roam the air, until you do something with it."

"What do you mean by 'do something with it'?"

"Simple." I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing, forcing my heart rate down to calm myself. I opened my eyes again to see a light green tinge on everything. A green, which was flowing from the every note plucked by my magic. "Once you learn to not just hear the sound, you can train yourself to feel it. Once you manage that, it's a simple matter of using your magic to direct it's effects into whatever you desire."

"Such as?"

"Such as turning the simple sound waves into spears of light, harmonizing with the music that created it, and then directing those spears to focus into the ears of the enemy  A simple lullaby, starting on a whim, can drop a dozen armed soldiers with ease. If I want to literally harm them, I can just focus on the resonance between the sound and the spear a bit more until it solidifies. Boom, impaled."

"Wait what? Why didn't you do that kind of stuff when you guys were getting shot at?"

"Ear plugs. If they can't hear the sound of my music, it can't touch them."

"That's a little cheap. Just two little bits of foam blocking something that awesome?"

"Yeah... But If I can't harm or debilitate my enemies with it, I can always just assist my friends."

"How so?"

"I-" My mind suddenly went blank, and my lyre fell to the ground. "I have no idea. I feel like I know, but when I try to remember it's just this big empty blegh."

Gate ambled over to us.  "How did you explain all of that, when you've only done any of it once, on sheer instinct and accident?"

I noticed myself shaking a little. "I-I don't know... He asked, so I just sort of explained. Is that at all weird?"

Guyra just shrugged. "Not at all as weird as the rest of the stuff that's been going on. I mean, swapping genders? How did you males ever aim these things!?" He was sitting on his haunches, gesturing towards his crotch with his forehooves.

"That is not a topic I am obliged to discuss." I felt my face get a little bit warmer.

"You haven't even tried out your new equipment yet, have you?" He eyed me suspiciously.

"Considering all the hell that's been breaking out lately, I've barely had time to eat. I'm always either running for my life, fighting for my life, or unconscious because of unsuccessfully doing one of the other two."

"You know, I could help you get used to your new found gender..."

It was right about then that I decided to pretend to faint, just to avoid that conversation.

Snow fell to the ground with a thud. All eyes fell to him, only to see a small, plastic dart sticking out of his neck. Guyra hit the ground beside me, almost immediately.

Gate shouted. “EVERYPONY! GET DOWN!”

Love and Twinkle obliged, unwillingly. They had been tranquillized.

“What the hell Heart, Did you not hear them?!”

“I still don’t! I have no idea where it’s coming from Gate!” I paused for a moment. Gate didn’t answer. A short, sharp pain in my neck later, and everything faded to black.

“…and keep them under watch at all times. We can’t afford to let any of them wake up without us knowing, not until they arrive.” I heard, in a hushed voice. It was a male voice, obviously a lifelong smoker, I’d put him around 40.

“Yes sir. If any of them so much as open their eyes, I’ll put them under. Any movement, and I just press this button.” A younger, less confident voice replied.

Needless to say, I opted out of opening my eyes. I decided to simply stay immobile and uncertain of my surroundings. There was the occasional shuffling, sometimes from above, sometimes from the side, and once from below. It sounded like unconscious movements made in sleep. With my eyes closed, my ears and mind were free to roam. I could hear eight sets of breathing lungs beyond my own. One forward, about four feet, the rest positioned around me, with something in between us.

After a time, I noticed the heartbeat and breathing of my would-be guard started to slow. That idiot must be new at guarding potentially dangerous prisoners, he was falling asleep! I didn't hear any other signs of life, so I decided to venture forth and crack my eyes open.

For the briefest of moments, I began to panic, but I calmed myself. I let my eyes open a bit wider, to take in more of my situation. I was in a form of hard plastic box that was so small I was forced to remain laying on my stomach, with the steel bars blocking the only possible exit. I saw my ‘guard’, who was napping quietly in a folding camping chair outside of my make shift prison.

He was wearing an all too familiar uniform, only lacking the helmet I had previously seen. It was my first time getting a close up look, without having to run.  The boots were as you would expect, steel toed and thickly laced. His pants were colored in urban camouflage gray, and were loose enough to allow a full range of movement without being too loose to wear. His bullet proof vest was a simple solid gray, worn over a rather thick looking shirt. On his sleeve was an insignia that was rather frightening in its appearance. The insignia was the silhouette of various predators, such as a Lion’s head and a crocodile, with a net-like pattern in the back ground. And then it hit me. These guys weren’t soldiers, they were hunters.

I started hyperventilating, when I heard Guyra’s voice from my right, in a hushed whisper. “Calm down you idiot! We’ve all seen it already.”

“Wait, you guys are awake?” I snapped back.

I heard a series noises that I assumed were hooves on plastic, tapping twice each. There was five in total, each from a different location in the room.

Guyra whispered to me again. “Yeah, it seems they were dumb enough to leave us all in the same room. Gate and Twinkle have been sort of pinging each other with magic, in Morse Code, to decide on a plan of action.”

I heard Twinkle’s voice answer him, laced with venom. “Will you two shut up? He’s waking up! Act out of it still!”

I immediately closed my eyes and let my body fall back to its limp position. I heard the Guard guy slowly stand and step out of the room. I heard him grumble something about needing to use the restroom.

“Guys, if we’re getting out of here, now is our chance. He’s in the can.”

Gate groaned. “Why would they let us escape so easily, unless they wanted us too? I say we act as calm as possible until we are threatened. They might be wondering if we are hostile.”

Twinkle coughed a little under her breath. “I think I proved the hostility thing when I made a dozen of them think they were burning alive.”

Love gasped, seemingly surprised at the other mare’s violence. “You did what?!”

“It’s not like any of them were actually hurt in any way at all. They were just terribly frightened, and in a lot of non-existent pain.”

“Uhh everypony…”

“Still though, you probably scarred the poor dears for life! No wonder they abducted us like this!”

“Hey, guys…”

“They started it! They broke into Snow’s house in the middle of night and-“

“GUYS!” I finally shouted.

“What?” Twinkle was glaring at me for interrupting her rebuttal.

“Why are we still here? We are unicorns right? Why haven’t any of us just ‘poof’ bars are open?”

Gate chuckled a little. “Well, dang. Why didn't I think of that?”

Within a matter of seconds, we were all out of the little boxes, save for Snow. He was having a bit of trouble fitting through the small gate, so he just tore the box open instead.

Guyra nudged me in the shoulder. “Why didn't he do that earlier?”

“Buck if I know. No one ever said he was the smart one.”

I yet again received his ‘I’m going to strangle you with your own intestines’ glare. “At least I’m useful in a fight. What do you do again? Listen to things?”

I rolled my eyes. “Anything you can do with your muscles, I can do with my magic. From farther away.”

He had a smug grin on his face. “Oh really?” His tiny wings started flapping and he floated into the air.

“Screw you, Snowball.”

“Twinkle already did, thanks for the offer though.” He and Guyra got quite the chuckle.

And then the guard came back into the room.