//------------------------------// // Origins // Story: Alters // by Discorded SheepcityUSA //------------------------------// Have you ever not been able to control what you do? Like the untamable urges residing in your subconscious could overtake you at any waking moment, and your body will refuse to listen to you while you satisfy them? If not, then let me describe it for you in MY case. My name is Boom-Boom, I’m nineteen years old, and I’ve only gotten my Cutie Mark last year. Do you know how embarrassing it is being practically a full grown stallion and still having a blank flank? It’s humiliating to say the least. But little did I know that when I did get my Cutie Mark…I wouldn’t like what I got. I’m a Pegasus that is always on the run throughout Equestria. Why you may ask? Well, I’ve done some things. Things that would make anypony recoil in terror, things that I’m really not proud of, things that basically cost me my future in the Wonderbolts. But the cruelty of it all…is that I couldn’t keep myself from doing them. I didn’t want to, but I had no choice. You see, I suffer from a multiple personality disorder. You know, that mental disorder that basically means two ponies living in the same body? In most cases that I’ve seen, the other personas are usually harmless. For instance, I had read about this pony that had been your average unicorn on one side, but a foal on the other. He acted similar to how you would think a six year old would behave. I on the other hoof, was not as lucky. My alter is completely irrational. He is utterly dangerous and cannot be contained. Whenever he does come about, he won’t listen to reason when I demand him from inside our mind to give up his pointless dreams of destruction. I swear, this pony only desires to see the world burn at our hooves, and I can’t get him to stop! Oh, you don’t want to hear all that sappy BS about how my good buddy’s life got all screwed up because of me, now do you? No, you want to hear things from the perspective of the more entertaining of the two. Am I right? Our life had been pretty cruddy all together. My other half had this whole idea that he was destined to be one of the Wonderbolts or some crap, and he got us dragged into the Academy. I don’t know about the rest of you, but just because we’re a Pegasus doesn’t mean we have to strain ourselves trying to fly overly fast. I mean, whatever he does when he is in control, I’ll end up paying for later. Let’s say for the sake of argument, he sprains his wing, or breaks his neck, or maybe the idiot somehow fell into a vat of acid. Sure he feels the pain too, but when I take command, I’m not prepared for that. And I’ll tell you what, this moron has screwed his wings up more times than I can count trying to train for this damn group. Why on Equestria do I always need to feel the penalties for what this dummy screws up? To put it bluntly, sharing a body sucks. Only every now and then did I even bother to come out to cause a bit of unrest among the Pegasi of Cloudsdale. I caused the usual trouble that any other lowly thug would cause. Graffiti, the occasional pickpocketing, nothing really impressive. Though, I will say it was quite funny whenever my other half would wake up dazed and confused with somepony else’s wallet. However, near graduation, I met the love of my life…pure destruction. It was close to graduation at the Wonderbolt Academy. I had always enjoyed watching the airshows that those amazing ponies had put on, and I could only dream what it would be like to BE one of them. I had trained inponily hard to get this far. Constantly pushing my wings to their very limits, always bringing my best. Yeah there were some pretty big obstacles along the way, a few failed stunts and jacked-up wings here and there, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. My alter however, didn’t seem to share my love of flying as much. All he felt like doing was causing trouble and making other ponies angry. And I’m the one to take punishment for sins that aren’t even my own. One of the many joys of being me, I suppose. Anyway, graduation was nearly upon us, I was so close to achieving my dream…and HE just had to ruin it all. I had been returning home from another day at the Wonderbolt Academy, and I came across this abandoned warehouse outside of the Cloudsdale Weather Factory. I knew nothing was really wrong with the place, but that bucking Rainbow Factory rumor still makes me shudder, so I desperately wanted to avoid the Weather Factory as much as possible. Can’t be too careful right? Unfortunately for me, my home was only about a block away from it, and you had to pass by it to get there, so avoiding the place wasn’t an option. The warehouse was surrounded by other Pegasi wearing hard hats, and it looked like they were planting dynamite inside of it. Apparently, it had been abandoned a while back and was damaged beyond repair. And judging from the dynamite, I had put two and two together and figured they were going to blow it up. I decided to stick around to watch the demolition. Why the heck not? What I hadn’t realized, was that my alter would enjoy it all too much. I watched from the inside. I watched the workers push down on the detonator, causing the entire building to erupt into a fiery mess. The windows shattered upon detonation, and the building soon dissipated into nothing but a few strands of clouds and broken glass… Oh Celestia I was in absolute bliss. I enjoyed every second of that fantastic explosion, and it made me crave misfortune among ponies more than ever. The minor crimes I had performed before were NOTHING compared to such a spectacle. You could say that seeing something THAT destructive left a pretty good impression on me. My bro wasn’t all that impressed, but who really cared what he thought? However, I realized something was wrong here. Something felt…missing. It was as if that explosion wasn’t enough to satisfy my newfound lust. Explosions are more than just a big mass of fire that leaves a big path of property damage in it’s wake. No, it needs a conductor…a doombringer if you will, with a sense of style, somepony that understands anarchy and unrest as much as I do… I knew I could do better. Not wanting to waste any time, I took hold of our body, much to the defiance of my other. He puts up a good fight, but I guess I’m just too bucking legendary for him. I quickly managed to overtake him and shove him back into the depths of our brain for the time being. If it was one good thing that came out of this whole Wonderbolt fiasco, it was that I knew where those idiots kept their supply of fireworks. I had made my way back to the academy. From the looks of things, everypony had already turned in for the night, leaving the whole place completely unguarded. Did I ever mention how smart the Wonderbolts are by the way? I bucked the locked door of the Fireworks Storage down with my hind legs and saw just how much firepower these nutcases had. You would think with all these damn pyrotechnics that nopony would pay attention to their actual flying. Questionable motives aside, I observed the appalling amount of fire-starters in here. I could only imagine what a genius like myself could do with all of it. My usual grin grew impossibly huge at the thought of all of these fireworks raining across the city in a glorious and fiery blaze. I could still hear my other screaming at me to stop. To try and keep me from bringing my beautiful destruction on the city in the clouds. What? You think I listened to him? And people say I’M crazy. Again with their stupidity, those Wonderbolts always left a lighter in the office in the building. I suppose they thought since the door was locked that everything would be fine. Hehe. My flank. Again, I busted the door down, revealing a wooden desk with about a metric ton of papers littering it. Honestly, how much paperwork does Spitfire get?! I had gone through the drawers and eventually found the lighter in there. I figured I would start my reign of terror on the symbol of the constant pain in my wings; being the Wonderbolt Academy itself. I picked up a saddlebag that lay in the corner of the room and threw it on my back and made my way back to the fireworks storage. I stuffed as many explosives as I could into the saddlebags, which unfortunately made it a tad heavy. Oh well, it’d all be worth it soon enough. I backed up a pretty good distance, leaving just enough fireworks in the building to completely demolish it. I set one rocket down, aiming it directly at the stockpile, and lit it. The sparks flew off the wick, making it get much shorter with each passing second. Not feeling like singing my tail, I made like a banana and split. Once outside, I looked on at the building, patiently awaiting disaster to befall on it. Again I could hear my other half yelling at me, calling me a monster that deserves to be banished to the tenth level of Tartarus by Princess Celestia herself for even having such terrible thoughts. If we didn’t have the same body, I probably would’ve kicked his flank like there were no tomorrow. In that instant, the entire building exploded into a giant mass of colorful fire and ashes. A large flurry of soot flew into through the air and right into our mane and tail, dying them a dark black. That combined with the force from the explosion threw it back, making our mane look rather unkempt and out of control. Most ponies would probably say that I looked quite ridiculous, what with my hair sticking out in every possible direction, but I have to say, this style suits me better. I think I’ll keep it. Apparently the noise had awoken the entire boot camp and they all came flooding from their bunks to see what was happening, the commanding officer Spitfire included. As you could imagine, she didn’t take too kindly to me blowing part of her academy sky-high. Go figure. The other Wonderbolts in-training stared at me with horrified expressions, trying to comprehend how one of them could’ve done something like this. Good. I like em’ scared. While the rejects were wrestling with their own heads, I had to deal with Spitfire telling me off, and doing a pretty pathetic job I might add. She went off on some rant about how my I could’ve been one of the greatest flyers in Equestria, how I was throwing my entire future out the window, blah blah blah. At that point, I noticed something glowing around me, specifically on my hindquarters area. On what had previously been a blank, orange flank, now showed an exploding firecracker. After all these agonizing years, I had finally discovered what I was meant to do…bring destruction upon these puny little ponies. Spitfire had noticed the change as well, and she still looked at me with that same, angry, “I hate you with every fiber of my living being” look. I had always found taking Spitfire seriously was a difficult task on my part, because frankly, she’s pretty cute when she’s angry. Instead of continuing her fruitless screaming, she instead let out a rather hostile “Buck you”. It was at that point that I came up with possibly the greatest comeback of all time. “Hehe. Sounds fun.” I said. I’m hilarious. I desperately wanted to tell Spitfire this wasn’t what everything appeared to be, though considering what was happening, she probably wouldn’t have believed me, even if I could say anything. But ANYTHING would’ve been better than what was coming from the mind of my inner maniac. All she was able to hear was the rambling of this psychopath, and I was powerless to stop any of it. This bastard ruined my chances at getting into the Wonderbolts, was quickly making everypony hate me, and all I could do was sit idly by and wait for him to finish. Eventually, I guess the monster had enough and flew off into Luna’s night sky. Spitfire had ordered several of the Wonderbolts in-training onto us, and now we had about 15 angry Pegasi on our tail. He launched a few fireworks into the crowd, and the explosions caused the group to disperse. A few of the ponies had landed in the clouds in the surrounding area, and the rest were too disoriented from the blast to find us. And just as quickly as we had appeared, we were gone... That night, my nemesis rained down a storm of destruction on Cloudsdale, turning the city into crumbling, smoking ruins after his onslaught. He giggled at the sight of the hundreds of Pegasi cowering before his pyrotechnic expertise. Looking at what my body had done as his vessel, I saw the same sight that paralyzed me in fear but made my alter laugh in delight. I swear, if there was to be justice in any of this, I would’ve dropped dead right there. At least then I wouldn’t have caused as much suffering as I did. Yeah, I would be dead, but the monster would be gone as well. Better me then all these innocent ponies. Unfortunately, life isn’t fair. Spitfire had gotten in touch with Princess Celestia about the incident at the Academy, and a complaint from a Wonderbolt doesn’t go unanswered. Now, I’ve gone from having a promising life as one of the greatest flyers in all of Equestria, to becoming Public Enemy #1. And with my kind of training, I know I'll never be caught. Of course I’ve tried turning myself in and attempted suicide a couple of times. Again, anything to keep innocent ponies from hurting at my hooves. But every time try… HE stops me. Hehehehe. I don’t see why you want my fun to end so soon, buddy. That mark on your flank is telling you that you were MEANT for this. THIS is your life. Your personal Tartarus is my daily routine, and I LOVE IT! All I’m saying, is that you may want to get used to this, cause I don’t plan on letting this go anytime soon… And neither should you...