Story Fragment - The Interview · 9:18am Nov 3rd, 2020
This is a bit of fiction I wrote for a game I started running recently. I won't be turning it into a story, but I think you can glean a lot of the most important beats from the narrative.
Enjoy!
In a small family home in Hawai'i, a young woman home for the holidays sat with her legs pulled up on the couch, flicking through news coverage of the chaos in downtown Portland. All of the big name broadcasters were calling it a "clever marketing campaign," but something about the event captivated her. In her other hand she held her phone, rapidly scrolling through her feed as though trying to divine the works of god through chaos, like she did everyday at the university's math department.
"Akiko!" her mother called. "Dinner! Don't let the food get cold, hon."
Though they kept reminders of their immigration scattered about the home in the form of wall scrolls, lacquered boxes, and vases, the Towairaito family had lived in Hawai'i long enough to lose its accent and become essentially American in most respects. Akiko's brother, Yoroi, came over to help set the table, a slender if athletic young man, talking quietly with their father.
Yoroi's daughter, Kokoro, hopped up onto the couch and snuggled under Akiko's arm. "Look! Unicorns!" She looked up, beaming. "Are we going to turn into ponies, too, Auntie Akiko?"
Her mother, Melody, laughed, leaning over the couch from behind. "No, of course not, you little munchkin." It had surprised no one when Yoroi had married the hottest cheerleader at school, nerdy basement dweller or no. Her own family were native Hawai'ian with more than a little royal blood, so the rumors went. "We should go to the dinner table now."
Despite her admonition, Melody found her eyes trending up to the screen as well and staying there.
Wolf Blitzer stood at a large projection of the city, which animated little helicopters and large, armored vehicles coming up the main arteries of the city. "Governor Brown called the National Guard as reports of civil disturbances continue to roll in. We just showed you video of demonstrators from the ongoing BLM protests breaking into a police vehicle to rescue two of the-" He paused with a hand to his ear. "This is breaking news. I'm being told that a local ABC affiliate in Portland is about to interview someone who claims to speak for the people involved. We'll have that up in a minute."
Akiko didn't wait, instantly flipping to the ABC channel, where they'd already moved to stage at the affiliate station in Portland with a backdrop of the city. A Black woman in a pantsuit adjusted her papers, sitting across from an empty bucket seat, another at her side. Lifting her head, she faced the camera - and the nation - squarely.
"Hello. I'm Janice Delarosa, and as of an hour ago our station was contacted by a person claiming to be responsible for the strange events that you have seen here in Portland."
Images played over her, footage of horse-like beings galloping through a convention center, crying out in confusion and fear. Another image showed a unicorn quivering on the sidewalk of a major bridge, a shell of yellow magic covering her. Two pegasi flying over a crowd near the protest zoomed down to strike a pair of police officers dragging off a dazed mare. A small dragon ripped his way out of a police car.
"This individual, who identified herself as Clotho, was seen by numerous people at the FanDom Convention early this morning." More video of a young woman in a green shirt played with her squeaky, hanky ice cream cart. She stopped a young man and his son, clapping a bracelet with a red stone on the son's wrist and then a pink one on the father's. "Several witnesses attested to her handing out bracelets with colored jewels. Most thought she was a vendor selling handmade merchandise for a children's cartoon television show that was cancelled a few years ago named My Little Pony. We now believe this was ground zero, and this person, Clotho, was spreading an agent that somehow transformed her targets into characters from the show."
The video changed again. A young woman in her hotel room stared down at hands transformed into shockingly realistic hooves, if smaller, more colorful, and more graceful than any they'd seen. "I'm dreaming, right?" she had asked the person holding the phone. "This isn't real."
A hand reached in to feel at the frog and she jumped back.
"Is anyone coming to dinner?" Yoroi asked, then stared at the screen. "Wow. Cool effect."
Akiko turned her head, her long, purple-dyed hair falling across Kokoro as she hugged her close. "Mom? Dad? You guys better come see this!"
One last video played of ponies chasing the vendor, shouting after her as she ran down a hall at the hotel's convention center. Before the startled eyes of witnesses, green wings burst through her shirt, and she leapt into the air. Fire flashed from a horn growing on her head, and glass fell into the frame. Two pegasi and a bat-winged stallion flew in pursuit as a unicorn, a young pony, and a pair of human women hurried to her fallen cart.
The camera then returned to the reporter. "In just a few moments, I will be speaking with the woman you just saw. Our research indicates that her real name is Allison Mankowski of Northeast Portland, a local high schooler. I can confirm for you with my own eyes that this is a real phenomena. One of our technicians is here with us after attending the convention. Jason?"
An ash-gray stallion with a white mane stepped out into frame, his wings draped across his back and the ends trailing past his hips. In size, he was as large as a human but shorter by virtue of being horizontal, with longer, limber limbs ending in shiny hooves. He settled into the empty seat next to her, sitting up on his haunches like a cat. If his lack of attire bothered him, he gave no sign, not that it was easy to see much with his coat.
"Jason, can you confirm for the audience your identity, please?"
He nodded and faced directly into one of the cameras. "My name is Jason Driver. I'm thirty-two years old, I live in Southeast Portland, I attended the University of Portland, and I drive a motorcycle to work every day."
"And what happened to you?"
He grabbed a tarnished silver bracelet with his mouth from his wing adroitly and set it on the chair. "It's just like you said. I was attending the convention, like I do every year, and this kid came up to me and slapped this on my wrist. She looked me right in the eyes and called me Thunderlane. Said I looked like a guy who loved to fly. Did for my little sister, too, and we weren't feeling well, so we went home, and that's where we changed." He shifted his wings faintly, the feathers rustling along his coat. "I actually did fly into work. I felt like the world had to see what happened."
"How is your sister doing?"
His ears laid flat, face shifting into a concerned look. "Well, I say sister, but the bracelet seems to have turned them into a colt? That's a young boy, right? Honestly, he, uhm, he seemed to adjust pretty much at once. Refuses to answer to his old name and calls me Thunderlane, even though he remembers everything from before. I had to beg him not to fly over the neighborhood until I got back."
Janice looked up, raising a hand. "It seems Miss Mankowski is ready." She frowned faintly, but gestured to someone off camera. "Yes, please, send her in."
Yoroi and Akiko's increasingly annoyed parents came over. "Dinner is already cold, you… guys…"
As one, the family stood transfixed as a tall, majestic green mare - winged like a pegasus, horned like a unicorn - stepped into the frame. Her shimmering mane and tail held the warmth of spring sunlight, and thin copper threads shone through it. Where Jason was only as big as a man, she defied all sense of scale, her slender body clad in a sleek, elegant dress in pastel jade green, with primrose lace and chased by little streaks of orange and red, like spring flowers. A shiny peytral marked with strange symbols gleamed on her chest in the studio lights, matched by a circlet stop her head.
"Thank you for having me," the mare said, her voice betraying her age somewhat. "My name, for the record, is Clotho, Princess of Equestria and second daughter of Princess Celestia."
Janice, who had likely only seen her in pictures and video before that moment, needed a moment to recover. "Uhm… very well, Clotho. Please, have a seat."
Glancing back at it, Clotho frowned faintly. "I think it's a touch too small for me. One moment." Green light spiraled up her horn and the whole chair flashed in the same color. Akiko jumped in place, eyes wide, as it became a low, cushioned divan in copper and green. "It will turn back in an hour or so," she said as she laid across it, hooves folding. "Hello Janice, Thunderlane."
If Janice looked surprised, Jason was floored, his jaw open wide and dark wings spread.
"His name is Jason, actually," Janice said as she recovered her wits. "Did you know him before today? Is that why you targeted him?"
"Until a week ago, Janice, I thought my name was Allison and that I was a pretty typical, lower-class kid going to high school. That is what I came here to talk about. I wouldn't have known him from any other guy I met on the street before my change."
Janice re-crossed her legs uncomfortably. "A week ago? You were seen transforming today."
"Yes. I can go back and forth." With a shimmer, she transformed into a young woman, her existing clothes turning to wisps to be replaced with a t-shirt and jeans. Though her hair was green rather than brown, she was unmistakably the same one from the videos. Quickly, she changed back, her wings shivering faintly. "I don't like doing it, though. This is who I am, not Allison."
Janice pounced on that. "You say your mother is Princess Celestia, yes? The cartoon horse from a little girl's animated slow?"
"That is a little weird," Jason said thoughtlessly. "I mean, Celestia doesn't have any children in the show."
As Janice stared at him, he flushed up to his ears and laid them back. "Uhm." He shuffled his hooves. "N-not that I watched it, of course. Hannah did." His face scrunched up.
"Rumble," Clotho corrected. "You shouldn't deadname your brother like that. He's been through enough, Thunderlane, and so have you. As for the show, that was the work of another lost pony - several in fact - and is about as accurate to our reality as a children's cartoon about the Revolutionary War."
"I don't understand." Janice leaned forward. "What are you talking about? The only 'ponies' we know of in this context are yourself and the people you changed."
"I didn't transform humans into ponies." Clotho shook her head. "Nor griffons, deer, and a dragon. That's not what the bracelets do. My sisters and I created them with our command of fate magic. They were made to help people change themselves." She turned to Jason. "Yes, your name was, apparently, Jason, but you know who you were, Thunderlane. You were a weather worker, you created and altered the weather every day with your magic."
He couldn't seem to look away from her, transfixed. "I…" He trembled in place faintly.
"Celestia's three daughters each had her gift of prophecy, but more focused and powerful. I am able to see the past, and that includes knowing who you were. That's what I was doing at the convention. I was passing out bracelets made for specific ponies and other magical beings that would help them realize their innate magic and true selves."
She flared a wing to cut Janice off before she could interrupt, her voice filling with ringing authority very unlike her normal, immature tones. "Enough. I have something to say to the nation and to the world, and you can pepper me with questions afterwards."
Rising back to her feet, Clotho turned to address the cameras. "As I told Janice earlier, my name is Princess Clotho, and like many of you out there listening now I lived a lie. Here is the truth."
Her horn flared, and the screen went green. An image grew in the center of the cloudy haze, a world on fire. No cartoon was this despite the vibrant hues, and no rendering, but a memory of a grand city aflame as shadowed beasts and monsters galloped through the streets.
"Equestria, my home, died."
A great tree of radiant crystal cracked and shattered.
"Once, we were a people united in love and magic, but our homeland, our world, was invaded by demons of chaos and destruction who could not bear our light. We fought them hoof and horn, tooth and claw for those that had him, and despite all our magic we failed."
From that shattered tree, cracks grew across the earth, the sky, the sea, and opened to starry voids. All across the land, huddled equines and griffons, roaring dragons, deer battling demons in the woods alongside unicorns, and indeed every living person flashed at once into starlight as the world shattered. The stars flit across the void, clustering together beyond sight and time.
"Our desperate souls found a home, here, on this earth. There we were reborn, our souls taking root as human babies, growing up all unawares but drawn to each other. People who had been together in a past life usually found themselves drawn together by inexplicable love, and they tended to gave birth to their children from a past life, too. We thought ourselves human like you, but deep down, we knew on some level that we were not."
The image fell away, Clotho returning to the divan. Tears streaked Jason's cheeks, and Kokoro sobbed quietly in Akiko's arms. "My sisters and I didn't change those people, as I said. Their human lives were real - I will forever be touched and haunted by the things I experienced growing up as a teenage girl in a poor neighborhood, watching my human parents die, and agonizing over food as my little sister seemed like she might soon join them. The thing is, though, a soul seated in the wrong body can never be happy." She reached out, draping a wing over Thunderlane's body as he wept. "I'm just trying to fix what went wrong and get my family and people back."
"Why run, though?" Janice pressed. "Why did you run away when those other ponies came after you? It's been chaos on the streets."
Clotho's ears pinned back as she sighed. "I thought they were angry and coming to stop me - they actually did catch up to me and my sisters, and we sorted things out. It wasn't supposed to happen so fast, but, as the unicorn mare you saw on the video put it, their souls were like dry tinder. We were anticipating that they would change over night, letting us pick them up safely, but even though my sister Atropos can see the future, she can't see it perfectly. We messed up there, and I personally apologize to anyone who was hurt or frightened in the chaos." She set her jaw. "That's why I'm here, to set things straight and tell the world who we are."
"And what happens now that you've changed people?" Janice gestured at Thunderlane, who accepted a tissue from a producer and blew his nose. "Assuming they… accept this story, and it isn't just something they did to their minds, what then?"
Clotho shook her head. "What I'm about to say will be frightening to a lot of people, but I'm not done. Not by a long shot. Right now, those demons are out there, in your world, trying to snuff us out for good this time. There are more people out there, ponies and other magical beings, who don't know who they are. I can't help them all personally, but I won't have to.
"Every pony I help free here releases more magic into the world. Even just being alive and interacting with the world brings more and more. At some point, they won't need bracelets. They'll just change, and when that happens, the whole world is going to be magic. It'll be fine for you humans - those who have been helping us have been all right. It might even be a really good thing. You'll have access to the kinds of things that have been dreamed about since humanity was born. The universe isn't lonely, it's bursting with people." She shuffled her hooves. "It's my hope, then, that we will be able to defeat the demons that want to kill us all and return home to Gaia, our Earth. I hope we can become and remain friends."
Janice seemed sucked in, her eyes wide as she absorbed it. Like most of the audience, she didn't seem to fully understand, but Akiko, for a shining moment, felt like she did. "How many people? If your story is true, how many people are like you and Thunderlane?"
Not answering at first, Clotho gestured to a producer with a wing. "Lita, right? Mother of two, dodgeball and women's softball enthusiast." One of the cameras shifted to look at a nervous hipster woman with a clipboard, her eyes wide. "No, don't look so worried. I just wanted to point out a real human." She took a deep breath. "You're still in the majority, Lita, by a fair margin, but the number is…" Clotho seemed to lose steam for a bit as she looked at the camera. "When our would died, there were close to a billion souls across the face of Gaia. One billion people out there, right now, who think they are human are not."
Janice practically stood up in her chair, anxiety and anticipation writ across her features, all journalistic decorum lost. "Wait. You looked at her, not at me."
Clotho's horn shone, and a bracelet settled between them with a yellow stone. "I know, Point Blank. It’s okay. No one’s going to make you."
Without waiting to see if she would put it on, Clotho rose and returned to the camera. "I know what that must sound like to those of you who are human. I promise you, we are not a threat. We are not here to conquer. Your friends, maybe even your family are going to be going through some changes. All of you will know someone close to you. We aren't your real enemy, but there are monsters who will hunt and kill your friends and, when they are done, they will come for you, too. I'm asking - no, begging - each of you to help us fight. I may not be human, but I know humanity can be as bold, kind, gentle, faithful, and joyful as any inhabitant of my world. Please, we're just like you."
A distant bang echoed through the station. The sounds of fighting followed. Frowning, Clotho spread her wings defensively and shifted out of the way. Behind her, revealed by her body, a transformed pegasus mare with a jade coat peeled out of her pantsuit. "Everyone, behind me!" A shield covered the ponies and humans alike as something large and powerful smashed through the ceiling, and the feed went dead.
It snapped Akiko and her family free. Dinner had long since gone cold, and every one of them was in tears. Melody reached over the couch and picked Kokoro up, her long black hair, dyed pink, half-covered her child as she leaned into Yoroi.
"We need to go," Akiko whispered woodenly. She didn't hear the national ABC newscasters as they returned, nor the broken sobbing of one of them, an older man who seemed to see his life flash before him.
"Sis?" Yoroi said. He spoke louder when she didn't answer. "What did you say?"
She flinched, her head aching painfully, and grabbed her phone to find a flight to PDX. Realizing that they probably wouldn't be receiving flights, she searched for another airport nearby. "I said we need to get there. As soon as possible. All of us."
"What, why?" He reached out, grabbing her shoulder. "Akiko?"
"You know why, the same as I do." She looked up at him, touching his hand. "My name isn't Akiko, Shiny, anymore than yours is Yoroi or Cadance's is Melody. I'm not just some math nerd." She sucked in a deep breath. "My name is Twilight Sparkle, and if we don't get off our asses and help, we're going to lose everything."
Twilight let go, booking six tickets on her parents' card. In truth, she had no idea what she could do even if she did show up, not without a bracelet or magic restored, but she knew one thing:
She wouldn't fail the world again.
"Towairaito"? Really? Subtle.
The subtlest.
Of course Clotho got things started. That's her job, after all.
Broad strokes and notable figures, with most of the messiness quietly kicked under the carpet. Makes sense to me.
Great prelude to the scenario. Here's hoping the game goes well.
As FOME said, I hope the game goes well!
5391243
Ha ha yeah, I had another, better word picked out, but then I decided it was too subtle and went with the hammer instead.
Cadance being a lost member of a nearly forgotten royal family was just too perfect to pass up, too.
Yeah, not the first time I've done that, though it's my first time using a text where the MLP show actually exists! In this context it's definitely "People who weren't actually there, with vague memories from their past lives, made something under the lens of giant corporate capitalism, and it's a wonder it came out at all."
5391284
Thanks!
I love this. I wish you would turn it into a longer story
In some ways the premise is very similar to Five Score, Divided by Four, which spawned a whole shared setting.
5391845
Yeah, I just don't have the time sadly.
It is a little similar to that in some ways, aye.
I absolutely hate Five Score, though. It's easily among my most disliked that isn't actively malicious like Cupcakes.
5391243
It has been, so far!
5391845
Perhaps in the sense that 'His Dark Materials' is similar in premise to 'The Chronicles of Narnia'. Which is to say that they share a similar premise but are, as stories, very different beasts.
Not that I have a problem with Five Score, Divided by Four. At one point I was writing a story set in it, until drama happened and I stopped bothering.
So I suppose on second thought, I do.
5392633
5391845
That's a good way to put it.
I've actually never read it, either. I just know the basic idea because Solana communicated it to me, and I read a really scathing review by Present Perfect that damned it.
5392664
I never read that review. It was 'mostly fine'. Not everything needs to be perfectly written. I found parts of it cringy, but cringe is relative.
5392664
Huh. I think when I read it it was after whatever the controversy around it was had died down. I mean, it certainly has problems but I enjoyed it overall.
Not everything needs to be a novel, this is a perfect example strangely interesting despite how short it is.
5393842
Yeah - it makes for a fun game, but what makes for a fun game doesn't always make for a good novel and vice versa.