//------------------------------// // Chapter 5 // Story: Give and Take // by I Thought I Was Toast //------------------------------// “Rarity, tell me why you needed Spike and Sweetie Bell.” Luna had a feeling that, as much as she would probably deny it, Rarity had saved them more out caring for them than wanting a tool to manipulate. They were two of the closest creatures to Rarity in Ponyville, and the one thing Luna knew about ponies using pawns was that it was bad to get close to them. Rarity was a manipulator in the most extreme sense. She would know that, when you use somepony as a mere tool, you couldn’t afford to know them. The guilt from tearing her other friends to pieces, while well hidden in a mask of cold logic, had already shown, and it was a fair assumption that she was already beating herself up inside even as the first part of her plan unfolded. That was why she’d stayed to watch the package be opened. She was giving herself time to realize that what she was doing was wrong. Memorizing the faces of everypony who passed by as she waited was just another sign of her attempting to stop herself. She was trying to well up enough feelings of guilt to sabotage her own plan. It was pitiable, Luna didn’t know what to feel about Rarity’s condition anymore. She was angry, but, at the same time, she could do nothing but cringe at what this ivory idol had done to herself. If there was one thing Luna had learned in the eons that were her life, it was how to get a sense of ponies. She may not be a master of her own emotions like her sister, but she was able to see when other ponies were conflicted. It probably came from all the inner conflicts she had with herself. In the case of Rarity, it was clear that there were two opposing forces in the mad mare’s heart. She was cynical, manipulative, and power hungry, but she was also hopeful, caring, and humble. She had so much hope for society that she was willing to place a bet, with her soul on the line, that this chaos would better the world in the end, and she was caring enough to inflict emotional torture on herself by personally placing herself in situations where she would see the pain she inflicted on the world. Throughout all her machinations, she made sure she suffered, so that she wouldn’t lose sight of her original goal. She was humble enough to see the flaws that were her greatest weakness, and that was what had led her down her path to begin with. It was odd that the very goodness she had possessed had, in the end, simply augmented the corruption that had grown inside her. All this repeatedly flashed through the princess of the night’s mind as she waited for Rarity’s response. Rarity was silent for a long time before answering. “I would rather not broach that subject right now, darling.” “Is that because of the fact that it isn’t part of your plan, or is it because you don’t like thinking about it?” “I don’t know...” Rarity trailed off into silence again, and Luna cursed herself for possibly going too far. If she was going to appeal to Rarity’s inner goodness, she needed to do it slowly. She didn’t want Rarity to crumble at what she had done. If there was one thing she had learned from being the horror that was Nightmare Moon, it was that everypony deserved a chance at redemption. This was not about waiting for revenge anymore. The mistress of the night sat and listened, because this was Rarity’s last chance at fixing a lifetime of wrongs, and it was Luna’s obligation to give her that chance. It was what her sister would have wanted. Rarity was still silent. Luna had to change the subject fast, or there was a chance she’d lose her forever. “Forget about it, dear. Why don’t you tell me how you managed to live for so long? It’s not natural for a Unicorn to be well past one hundred years old. How did you do it?” It was sudden and abrupt, but Luna knew that Rarity wouldn't even notice if it allowed her captor respite from her current train of thought. Rarity stayed lost for a couple more seconds. She was on a journey of the mind that no pony could truly see or understand. The mind is a sacred place, and only its owner can wander the unique mapping that is gifted to him or her. Sometimes it takes a while to cut through the swamp of obstacles we place for ourselves, and Rarity’s mind was doubtlessly filled with endless traps from the conflicting philosophies inside her, but she finally found her way out. “Yes, darling. I can see how that might peak your curiosity.” Her normal calm and poise returned, but there was an almost imperceptible shallowness to her breathing. “Being an immortal you must have lost many friends over the years, so any improvements in a ponies mortality means you get that much more time before losing them forever.” She was retaliating. The frustrated mare was trying to lash out with whatever little cuts she could make, and Luna knew it. Luna tried to keep her smile up, even though that comment cut more than the news of her sister's death, and even took a few sips from her tea. The lunar maiden hadn't considered that. She'd been so concerned with the loss of her sister she hadn't even realized how truly alone she was now. There was no one left to share the years with as all her other friends would perish, and her grief would only momentarily lapse when she found new ones. What would happen if she lost the ability to care enough to find new friends? What if the grief of thousands upon thousands of lost friends became too much? She had always thought Celestia would be there in the end, yet now she was all alone. The princess of the night drained her cup, only to fill it and drain it again, at such troubling thoughts. There was no point in fighting the drug anymore, since it was her goal was to hear Rarity out, and it seemed to calm Rarity when her hospitality was accepted, although drugging the tea wasn’t really very hospitable. Rarity lightened up slightly upon seeing her captive finally accept she would be here for a while, so she actually answered the question instead of continuing the barrage of sly insults forming in her head. She couldn’t let the princess of the night get to her. She had lasted so far without losing control, and she wasn’t going to let Luna pry the final piece of the puzzle away. She had come too far to fail now. Decades, and decades, of manipulating foals was not going to go down the drain because of those worthless feelings of guilt. She had know the cost coming into this, and she had know the cost coming out. “It’s remarkable what advances there have been in medical technology over the last hundred years. War is a perfect excuse to fund new research into how to heal ponies.” Rarity looked Luna straight in the eye as she continued. “It’s also remarkable for developing weapons technology, but I never pushed that. There are enough ways to kill somepony as it is.” That would have sounded odd coming from most villains, but Luna knew that Rarity’s overall goal was peace, not war. It wouldn’t make sense to leave the world tools that could end up tearing the peace she was trying to make apart. The princess of the night just smiled encouragingly and nodded for her host to continue. “At first these advances were enough for me, but no pony is supposed to live as long as I have. I established secret facilities meant to make even greater advances for medicine, but greater advances came at a cost. Testing these new treatments were very dangerous, but I needed them to become reality, so we picked up every terminally ill pony we could find to try and find these treatments. We hoped we’d end up helping them in the end, but there were years of failures until we found anything moderately helpful to any of them. They came willingly for the chance to find a cure, but more often than not they never ended up leaving. I made sure to enact laws on the testing of products after that.” Luna’s stomach had gone queasy at the thought of ponies running around as guinea pigs. “It wasn’t right, but it was necessary for me to continue my plans” “Why did you need to live for so long though?” Rarity smiled coyly again as her feeling of control returned. Luna had started to pity her, and that wouldn't help the plan. She could not risk any form of kindness from the princess. Any form of forgiveness or chance of redemption would send all her work crashing into oblivion. She needed Luna against her, and any of the princess of the night's questions that revealed the deplorable things she'd really done would further that objective. “Part of it was because I didn’t trust anypony. I couldn’t pass my plan off to anypony else because I couldn’t guarantee that they’d simply take all my power for themselves. The other reason I did it was for you. I knew it would take you a long time to grieve, and I needed you. I waited as long as I could for you to get it out of your system, so I could make sure my story would return you to the world. I figured the shock of an Element of Harmony being so corrupted and evil would be too much for you. If I had told you too soon you would have either relapsed into endless lamenting as I crushed any lingering hope you had for the world, or you would have gone into an endless rage and turned into a tyrant that would have made Nightmare Moon look like Fluttershy.” Luna was once again questioning what she was supposed to feel, just as Rarity wanted she bet. The warden of the stars may have fell for it, except this was just another excuse Rarity had come up with to deny any feelings she had. She felt guilty about the murder of Celestia, and had given the princess of the night as much time as she could to end her grief in a natural way, but it came at the expense of a lot of ponies lives. Rarity hadn’t wanted to tell the princess like this, and the extremes to which she’d gone to try and spare the princess the weight of both her grief and and the shock of the ivory idol’s story was rather comforting, and also rather disturbing. “Maybe we should return to your story, Rarity.” “Maybe we should, darling.” Rarity closed her eyes and sighed. “Maybe we should.” Author's Note: There wasn't a flashback in this chapter but I feel it was just as important. I wanted a more in depth look into the psyche of Luna and Rarity, because that will hopefully make the nuances to Rarity's plan more clear. It's more than a simple plan for world domination. It's a philosophical stand, and it reflects Rarity's own thoughts on society. Rarity's planning may be perfect, but, as her own ideals war inside her, she will try to sabotage herself. People do it every day in real society. Those are the decisions you look back on and ask why you made them. It's because on some level you were conflicted with your own ideals in the world and tried to change them. This is why I always liked Rarity on the show. She is the epitome of conflicting ideas, and she must balance them all. She is supposed to be the Element of Generosity, but she can be quite selfish and ambitious at times. She's generous in other ways though. Have you ever noticed she can't say no at certain points in the show? In Sweet and Elite she couldn't say no to anypony simply because she felt obligated to answer them all, and it ended in her ignoring Twilight's dress. That was nice because it mixed the flaw of her ambition with her inability to say no where she percieves she's needed. In Suited for Success she was unable to ignore her friends pleas at the cost of her reputation in the fashion show. She is willing to go to lengths for ponies at the expense of her own happiness sometimes, and yet she clearly has reluctance to even try to help in other situations. I find it all fascinating, and I lament how others tend to spurn her. Anyways, this is turning out a much longer note than I intended, and I doubt anyone really reads these anyways, but I put them here just in case. Besides, I also make them for my own benefit. My Author's Notes aren't so much notes as they are signatures. They're an impression of my state of mind at the end of each chapter, and they show how that chapters affected me. Whenever someone writes they pour their soul into the story, and it changes them. Their style of writing is a reflection of their very being, and writing their story can leave them considering things they wouldn't normally consider as they plunge into the depths of their being. Looking at these notes I can see how my story has changed me, and I can reflect on it. Obviously it can be annoying when I tend to put in a lot of insecure questions or statements, but I feel any author worth his salt should realize he could always improve. Oh... I started rambling again... That's enough for this set of notes...